ABSTRACT
IN the year 116o, or thereabouts, a ] ewish merchant left Tudela, his native town in Navarre, on a journey round the world. Of the incidents of this journey, Benjamin of Tudela's Itinerary has preserved the precious record 1. Benjamin travelled from Saragossa by way of Catalonia, the South of France, Italy, Greece, the Archipelago, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Ci lici a, to Syria, Palestine, the lands of the Caliphate, and Persia. His return route took him to the Indian Ocean, the coast towns of Yemen, Egypt, Sicily, and Castile, whither he returned, after an absence of about fourteen years 2. This Benjamin was a typical Jewish trader of the middle ages, yet he was no financier, usurer, hawker, or dealer in secondhand goods. As a merchant, he records the state of trade, and the nature of the products, of each country which he visited. His Itinerary furnishes the oldest material for the history of the commerce of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the twelfth century. But with an almost modern large-inindedness, Benjamin was equally interested in the general life of the peoples into whose midst he strayed. Countries and men interest him as
much as their commerce and handicrafts. Courtly gossip, popular superstitions, are entered in his diary side by side with business-like statements concerning trade and traders. Here, says he, may be obtained the brightest pearls. There, he tells us, again, arose the latest new-Persian-Jewish Messiah. Art and archaeology have attractions for him. He revels in the picturesque with all the ardour of an enthusiastic sightseer. He invariably tells us the number of Jewish residents in the various parts of the world through which he passed, and reports on their manner of life, their schools, and their trades. But he devotes much of his space to topics of wider interest. He describes the Assassins in Syria and Persia, the dangers of navigating the China seas; he gives a full account of Rome, with its buildings and relics; he has several brilliant paragraphs descriptive of Constantinople and Bagdad; Jerusalem and Damascus are depicted vigorously and vividly. Kings and peoples, their learning and their customs, their dress and their burials, all fall within the purview of this medieval merchant. His Hebrew style is that of a plain merchant, but it says a good deal that a plain merchant could write with so much simplicity and with so many graceful touches.
