[Footnote 75:  The MSS. are defective here; starting from Shechem, Mount Gilboa, which to this day presents a bare appearance, is in a different direction to Ajalon.  It is doubtful whether Benjamin personally visited all the places mentioned in his Itinerary.  His visit took place not long after the second great Crusade, when Palestine under the kings of Jerusalem was disturbed by internal dissensions and the onslaughts of the Saracens under Nur-ed-din of Damascus and his generals.  Benjamin could at best visit the places of note only when the opportunity offered.]

[Footnote 76:  This and most of the other places mentioned by Benjamin are more or less identified in the very important work published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, The Survey of Western Palestine.  Our author’s statements are carefully examined, and Colonel Conder, after expatiating upon the extraordinary mistakes made by writers in the time of the Crusaders, some of whom actually confounded the sea of Galilee with the Mediterranean, says:  “The mediaeval Jewish pilgrims appear as a rule to have had a much more accurate knowledge both of the country and of the Bible.  Their assertions are borne out by existing remains, and are of the greatest value.”]

     [Footnote 77:  King Baldwin III died in 1162, and was
     succeeded by his brother Almaric.]

[Footnote 78:  The reading of the Roman MS. that there were but four Jewish inhabitants at Jerusalem is in conformity with R. Pethachia, who passed through Palestine some ten or twenty years after R. Benjamin, and found but one Jew there.  The [Hebrew:  daleth] meaning four would easily be misread for [Hebrew:  resh] meaning 200.]

[Footnote 79:  The Knights of the Hospital of St. John and the Templars are here referred to.  See Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Charles Mills, History of the Crusades, 4th edition, vol.  I, p. 342, and Besant and Palmer’s Jerusalem, chap. ix.]

[Footnote 80:  Cf. the writings of Mukaddasi the Hierosolomite, one of the publications of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.  See also Edrisi’s and Ali of Herat’s works.  Chap. iii of Guy Le Strange’s Palestine gives full extracts of Edrisi’s account written in 1154 and Ali’s in 1173.  See also five plans of Jerusalem designed between 1160 and 1180, vol.  XV, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina-Vereins.]

[Footnote 81:  Ezek. xx. 35.  The idea that the Gorge of Jehoshaphat will be the scene of the last judgment is based upon Joel iv. 2.  Cf.  M.N.  Adler, Temple at Jerusalem and Sir Charles Warren’s Comments.]

[Footnote 82:  In memory of Absalom’s disobedience to his father, it is customary with the Jews to pelt this monument with stones to the present day.  The adjoining tomb is traditionally known as that of Zechariah, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, King