Narrative
Eldad the Danite
ספר אלדד הדני
Eldad ha-Dani · 880
Synopsis
A traveller tells his story. He says he is of the tribe of Dan and comes from the land of Cush, where Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher live under their own king. Having set out for Egypt with a man of the tribe of Asher, he is shipwrecked after a storm; both end up among a cannibal people who devour his companion and fatten Eldad. Carried off by a fire-worshipping people, he remains a captive for four years, then a Jew ransoms him. He finally tells where the scattered tribes live, and the sons of Moses, surrounded by the Sambation, a river that rolls sand and stones for six days and rests on the Sabbath.
Context
The Jews of Kairouan, troubled by the gap between the rules he reported and those of the Talmud, consulted the gaon Tzemah ben Hayyim of the Sura academy, who reassured them: that there were divergences on the law was nothing to be surprised at. Abraham Epstein saw in the book a historical novel in which truth is mixed with invention, and compared its rules with those of the Jews of Ethiopia. The text, known in several versions, was printed in Mantua in 1480, then in Constantinople and Venice. Eliakim Carmoly translated it into French in 1838, and Elkan Adler into English in 1930.
Who it is for
A narrative of a few pages, of which a French translation has existed since 1838. Better to know that tradition held ten of the twelve tribes of Israel to be lost, and sought them far away.
Prizes and reception
Printed as early as 1480 and often reissued in the sixteenth century, the narrative made its author's reputation among the grammarians of the Middle Ages.
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