Benjamin de Tudèle

See also: Benjamin

Benjamin de Tudèle , Rabbi Spanish, born with Tudela in Navarre at the beginning of the 12th century, died in 1173.

It wished to visit all the known Synagog S of the world to describe manners and the ceremonies of each one. One knows of him only what he reports in his account of voyage. It leaves Castille about 1160 to return there towards 1173.
It passes by the Greece about 1161-1162, Constantinople, the Syria, Palestine and Mésopotamie.
It is thought that it was to have a training of dyer, even whom it had exerted this profession, being given the private interest that it carries to this craft industry in the visited areas. Its interest for the invaluable stones advances another assumption: that he was merchant engaged in the international business of the invaluable stones. For other historians, it would have been sent by communities and/or Spanish Jewish academies in search of material helps on behalf of co-religionists. He is finally regarded as a proto-Zionist, sent by the Spanish Jews to estimate the conditions of a possible return in Palestine. No assumption is exclusive.

There is of him a Relation of his voyages , written in Hebrew in 1160, printed with Constantinople in 1543; translated into Latin, Leyde, 1633 and in French by Jean-Philippe Baratier, Amsterdam, 1734 and Paris, 1830.

External bonds

Benjamin de Tudèle in Jerusalem
'' Voyages of Rabbi Benjamin, wire of Jona de Tudèle, in Europe, in Asia and Africa, from Spain to China '' reproduces on Gallica, Amsterdam, 1734
'' Voyages made mainly in Asia in the XII, XIII, XIV and XV centuries '' reproduces on Gallica, $the Hague, at Jean Neaulme, 1735

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