Eldad ha-Dani
840 CE–900 CE · Geonim · Aden
Eldad ha-Dani (“Eldad the Danite”) was a ninth-century Jewish traveler and storyteller who appeared in the communities of Babylonia, North Africa, and Spain around 880 CE. He claimed to be a member of the tribe of Dan — one of the Ten Lost Tribes — living in an independent Jewish kingdom in East Africa, beyond the legendary river Sambatyon. His Hebrew narrative, Sefer Eldad, described the lost tribes and a distinctive code of ritual-slaughter laws; its archaic, almost biblical Hebrew astonished his hearers. When his accounts unsettled the scholars of Kairouan, they wrote to Tzemach ben Hayyim, Gaon of Sura, who reassured them that differences between the tribes' customs and the Talmud were unsurprising. Whatever the truth of his tales, Eldad's reports shaped the Jewish imagination of the Lost Tribes for centuries.
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AdenעדןYemen — port
What they did here
Probably born in southern Arabia. Eldad professed instead to be a citizen of an independent Jewish kingdom in East Africa, descended from the tribe of Dan — one of the Ten Lost Tribes said to dwell beyond the river Sambatyon.
About Aden
Aden is a port on the Gulf of Aden in southern Yemen, east of the Bab al-Mandab strait. Known to Greek writers as Arabia Emporion, it was long a transshipment point for Red Sea trade. In the Islamic era it passed among several Yemeni dynasties and flourished under the Rasulids (13th-15th centuries). The Ismaili missionary Ibn Hawshab preached here briefly, with little success, before basing himself inland. Britain seized Aden in 1839, and it was later the capital of South Yemen (1967-1990). Its ancient Jewish community was found in 1489 to be well versed in Maimonides; after deadly riots in 1947, nearly all its members left by 1967, many through Operation Magic Carpet to Israel.
Works
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