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

Joshua Lorki

A Jewish physician to Pope Benedict XIII, Joshua Lorki writes that a large community of Jews lives in the kingdom of Prester John (qtd. in Vitale, p. 14):

It is evident both from the letters of Rambam (Maimonides), whose memory be blessed, and from the narration of merchants who have visited the ends of the earth, that at this time the root of our faith is to be found in the lands of Babel and Teman, where long ago Jerusalem was an exile; not reckoning with those who live in the land of Paras (Persia) and Madai (Media), of the exiles of Schromrom, the number of which people is as the sand: of these, some are still under the yoke of Paras, who is called the Great Chief Sultan by the Arabs; others live in a place under the yoke of a strange people... governed by a Christian chief, Preste Cuan, by name. 

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