Letter on the Ten Tribes

Concerning the matter of the ten tribes, my dear sir should know that in Egypt, there is a place that is called Sawakin, almost a thirty-day distance away—from there, some say it is a three-day distance to Falasha, while others maintain that it is five. And the road is very rough, and Falasha is a rough kingdom of Jews who are mighty men. They travel and camp in camel-hair tents in order to put their livestock to pasture, for they are keepers of livestock [see Genesis 46:34]. The land is expansive for them [see Genesis 34:21] and it is situated upon high mountains, and nobody can ascend to wage a war with them. From there they descend to a different land called Tselemt and in the holy tongue it is called Shalem [i.e., “whole”] and it is a separate kingdom; it is also under the reign of Falasha, and it is flowing with milk and honey. Among these kingdoms is another kingdom of Somalia called Djabarta, and they pay a tax to the king of Falasha. Yet it is still not clear to us which tribe these Jews are from. For up until now, we had thought that they were of the tribes of Gad and Dan, according to the fact that the Muslims who came from Djabarta would tell us that they were the neighbors of Gad and Dan; and afterwards, it became directly known to us that the same land was called “the land of Gad and Dan,” and it was named after brothers who ruled over them. The king was named “Gad” and his brother was named “Dan,” and he was the prince. There are those who say that Dan died in war. And it was clarified for us by Muslims from Djabarta and uncircumcised men from Ethiopia that it is called Habesh and that the name of the father of these two was Phineas. The people would call him “the son of the lion” on account of his brave acts, for the “the son of the lion” alludes to how he broke the yoke of the rulers from the necks of the people of Habesh. During the war, he died upon his spear, leaving behind three sons: Gad, Dan, and Todros. A war broke out between them, and King Todros fled from his brothers and went to the land of Habesh where he was converted from Judaism, and he brought many powerful troops from the retinues of the kings who were willing to help him, and he suddenly entered into the kingdom of Tselemt and carried out a great massacre of the Jews. About one hundred thousand died. But in Falasha they did not succeed, for the entire world says that they could not prevail against them. In the end, after a few days, he fell into the hands of his brothers and they killed him; this killing was in the year 1504. Afterwards, the two brothers became strong and set out against their enemies. With their strength they did with their enemies as they pleased. War greatly increased, as did the attacks upon the people of Habesh. At a different time, King Gad was captured in war by one of the rulers of Habesh, and that ruler treated him according to the law of kings, and granted him respect, even though he was his captive. They came to an agreement between them that every year, King Gad would give him forty ounces of gold, on condition that he would not enable the Portuguese who entered his land, since from there they would come to fight with the Jews, with weapons of destruction that flung fire far afield. And indeed, the king of Habesh vowed to him to this effect and also gave him a vast and good parcel of land. And he sent several ministers with him, and they returned him to his kingdom. Immediately he issued a decree throughout the entire kingdom of Habesh to those who are close to the Jews that anyone who touches any Jew would suffer death. And in the kingdoms of the Jews was issued a decree that anyone who touched the people of Habesh would suffer death. [ . . . ]

And the king Prester John is the ruler over all of the people of Habesh, who are numerous, and they call him Sultan Bati, for they say that he is from the seed of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who performed the ritual immersion and slept with Solomon. A certain Christian from that land came here and told that from Falasha to the ruling city of Sultan Bati there is a distance of eight months. And the king upholds a few of the commandments of the Torah, and the statutes and customs, which are not observed by the people of his kingdom. And they say that now, some twenty-two months ago, many Jews from that area behind him were sent to him to tell him that since he is from the seed of Solomon and since he upholds a few of the commandments of the Torah, that he should convert completely to Judaism. And if he does not want to, then he should prepare himself for war. For this reason, he gathered kings and ministers close to himself, and they planned together to go to war this past summer, in the year 1527.