another. He had a natural aptitude for trade and
travel. His people were scattered to the four corners of the earth. As
we can see from Benjamin's Itinerary, there was scarcely a city of
importance where Jews could not be found. In the sacred tongue they
possessed a common language, and wherever they went they could rely
upon a hospitable reception from their co-religionists. Travelling
was, therefore, to them comparatively easy, and the bond of common
interest always supplied a motive. Like Joseph, the traveller would be
dispatched with the injunction: "I pray thee see whether it be well
with thy brethren, and bring me word again."

If this was the case in times when toleration and protection were
extended to the Jews, how much stronger must have grown the desire for
intercommunication at the time of the Crusades. The most prosperous
communities in Germany and the Jewish congregations that lay along the
route to Palestine had been exterminated or dispersed, and even in
Spain, where the Jews had enjoyed complete security for centuries,
they were being pitilessly persecuted in the Moorish kingdom of
Cordova.

It is not unlikely, therefore, that Benjamin may have undertaken his
journey with the object of finding out where his expatriated brethren
might find an asylum. It will be noted that Benjamin seems to use
every effort to trace and to afford particulars of independent
communities of Jews, who had chiefs of their own, and owed no
allegiance to the foreigner.

He may have had trade and mercantile operations in view. He certainly
dwells on matters of commercial interest with considerable detail.
Probably he was actuated by both motives, coupled with the pious wish
of making a pilgrimage to the land of his fathers.

Whatever his intentions may have been, we owe Benjamin no small debt
of gratitude for handing to posterity records that form a unique
contribution to our knowledge of geography and ethnology in the Middle
Ages.

III. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

"The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela," prepared and published by
A. Asher, is the best edition of the diary of that traveller. The
first volume appeared in 1840, and contained a carefully compiled
Hebrew text with vowel points, together with an English translation
and a bibliographical account. A second volume appeared in 1841
containing elaborate notes by Asher himself and by such eminent
scholars as Zunz and Rapoport, together with a valuable essay by the
fo