rmer on the Geographical Literature of the Jews and on the Geography
of Palestine, also an Essay by Lebrecht on the Caliphate of Bagdad.

In addition to twenty-three several reprints and translations
enumerated by Asher, various others have since appeared from time to
time, but all of them are based upon the two editions of the text from
which he compiled his work. These were the Editio Princeps, printed by
Eliezer ben Gershon at Constantinople, 1543, and the Ferrara Edition
of 1556, printed by Abraham Usque, the editor of the famous "Jews"
Bible in Spanish.

Asher himself more than once deplores the fact that he had not a
single MS. to resort to when confronted by doubtful or divergent
readings in the texts before him.

I have, however, been fortunate enough to be able to trace and examine
three complete MSS. of Benjamin's Travels, as well as large fragments
belonging to two other MSS., and these I have embodied in my present
collation. The following is a brief description of the MSS.:--

I. BM, a MS. in the British Museum (No. 27,089). It is bound up with
some of Maimonides' works, several Midrashic tracts, a commentary on
the Hagadah by Joseph Gikatilia, and an extract from Abarbanel's
commentary on Isaiah; it forms part of the Almanzi collection, which
curiously enough was purchased by the British Museum from Asher & Co.
in October, 1865, some twenty years after Asher's death.

Photographs of three pages of this MS. will be found with the Hebrew
text. With regard to the date of the MS., some competent judges who
have seen it assign it to the thirteenth century, and this view has
some support from Professor S.D. Luzzatto, who, in Steinschneider's
_Hammazkir_ (vol. V, fo. 105, xvii) makes the following comment upon
it:--

[HEBREW: Masaot R. Binyamin y''g dafim k'tivah ashkenazit k'domah
yoter:]

This MS. is the groundwork of the text I have adopted.

2. R, or the Roman MS., in the Casanatense library at Rome, and
numbered No. 216 in the Catalogue Sacerdote. This MS. occupies the
first twenty-seven leaves of Codex 3097, which contains fifteen other
treatises, among them a text of Eldad Hadani, all written by the same
scribe, Isaac of Pisa, in 5189 A.M., which corresponds with 1429-1430
(see Colophon at the end of the Hebrew text, page [HEBREW: ayn-nun]).
Under my direction Dr. Gruenhut, of Jerusalem, proceeded to Rome, and
made a copy. Subsequently I obtained a collation of it made by the
late Dr. Neubauer; b