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 former 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:—­