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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Book of Eldad

Written in the late 9th century, The Sefer Eldad [Book of Eldad], authored by the Arabian Jewish author Eldad ha-Dani [the Danite], is a sometimes imaginative account of Eldad's travels through Egypt, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Spain. It is a text that the author of the Prester John Letter appears to be familiar with, which tells us something of this author's learning, since the Sefer Eldad was not translated into Latin until the sixteenth century.

The Letter's allusions to the Ten Lost Tribes and the River Sambatyon (dry, sandy sea), along with the early translations of the Letter into Hebrew, link the Prester John Letter with the tradition of the Sefer Eldad.

Hamilton summarizes this tradition in his article "Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne":

“In the late ninth century a certain Eldad ha-Dani, claiming to belong to the lost tribe of Dan, visited by the Jews of Kairouan and gave them news of their compatriots. They were, he said, settled in various parts of Asia, some in independent states, but the Levites were cut off from the rest by the river Sambayton, which was unnavigable, being composed not of water, but of sand and stones. In obedience to the Torah it ceased to flow on the Sabbath day, but that was no help to Jews who wished to cross it since they were similarly immobilised by the precepts of the law. In this way the Ten Lost Tribes were added to the list of the marvels of Asia” (172).

Ten Lost Tribes: Babylonian Exile

Beckingham and Hamilton summarize the relationship between Prester John and the Sefer Eldad tradition in the "Editors Preface" of their edition of the Hebrew Letters of Prester John.

“Among the inhabitants of Prester John’s Empire were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who lived beyond the stony river Sambatyon which does not flow on the sabbath. The Jews were naturally interested in his story, and versions of the Letter of Prester John were circulated in Hebrew probably from the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries. These have been edited with an English translation by Edward Ullendorff and C.F. Beckingham, The Hebrew Letters of Prester John, Oxford, 1982. In their introduction the authors considered the relation of the Prester John Letter to the narrative of Eldad ha-Dani, a Jew who visited Qayrawan in 883, claiming to be a member of one of the Ten Lost Tribes. The narrative of his discourse, the Sefer Eldad, was available only in Hebrew in the Middle Ages, and is almost 300 years older than the earliest extant version of the Prester John Letter, yet it contains material common to them both but found in no other source” (xiii).

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The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela Masa'ot Binyamin (1164-73)

Benjamin of Tudela, who traveled between 1159 and 1173, ventured as far as Basrah, Iraq. In his Travels, which were recorded in Hebrew, he mentions a powerful Eastern king called Kofar al-Turak whom some readers mistook for the Prester John of the Letter and Otto’s chronicle.

There exist other connections between Benjamin's narrative and the Letter, including a mention of Daniel's tomb while Benjamin of Tudela was in Susa, as well as a mention of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which Benjamin describes as having a giant mirror similar to that described in Interpolation C of the Letter (Silverberg, 67).

Due perhaps to Benjamin’s narrative, some of the earliest copies of the Letter are in Hebrew, a feature of the legend that has also linked the figure of Prester John to the enigmatic tradition of the Sefer Eldad.

Read Benjamin's Travels online.

For more on Benjamin and the Itinerary

From Baring-Gould (37):
Benjamin of Tudela… traveled in the East between the years of 1159-1173, the last being the date of his death. He wrote an account of his travels, and gives in it some information with regard to a mythical Jew king, who reigned in the utmost splendour over a realm inhabited by Jews alone, situate somewhere in the midst of a desert of vast extent.”
From Silverberg (67):
The third interpolation [of the Letter of Prester John] has Prester John declare that each year he goes into the desert to pay homage to the tomb of Daniel, a figure of some mystical significance with a considerable apocryphal literature of his own. In the late twelfth century the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela had been shown a tomb said to be Danel’s while he was in the Persian city of Susa, and this, possibly, led to the linking of Daniel and Prester John.
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel The ten lost tribes of Israel denotes those sons of Jacob that left the Kingdom of Israel and is a curious addition to the Prester John Letter that can likely be traced back to the author of the Letter's familiarity with the Sefer Eldad.

The story of these lost tribes has long been a topic of messianic thought. During the Middle Ages, there were a number of hypotheses as to where these tribes were, when they would return, and what that return would mean for the world.

The attention to this prophecy in the Letter may help explain the early proliferation of Hebrew translations of the Letter.

In addition to a familiarity with the Sefer Eldad, the Letter's author seems to be influenced, in part, by the narrative of the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, whose mention of a text describing the alleged return of one of the tribes to Africa, may have helped inspire these details.

List of 12 Tribes of Israel, as given in the Old and New Testaments

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