Rare ancient book acquired in Canada: The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela.

In the mid 1100’s, and some 100 years before Marco Polo would travel some of the same routes, a Jewish merchant embarked upon an amazing 13 year journey throughout present-day Spain, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle-East.

His name was Benjamin of Tudela. He was a resident of nearby Zaragoza in north-central Spain not far from the French border. At the time it was under Moorish rule as part al-Andalus, which covered much of present day Spain..

Upon his return from this epic multi-year adventure he wrote a book in Hebrew about his journey. Now, McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, has acquired an extremely rare copy of the first Latin translation

Myron Groover, is the Archives and Rare Books Librarian at McMaster University

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The travelogue is an amazing look at the world in the 12th century, including places that ceased to exist in their form at that time only shortly after his travels.

For example, he gives a detailed look and description of Constantinople in the 12^th century, the centre of the Byzantine empire, but which was burned and destroyed only a couple of decades later during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Benjamin similarly describes Baghdad of the time, cultural capital of the Muslim world, but also destroyed about 100 years later during a Mongol invasion.

In a McMaster news article Mr Groover says, ““Benjamin is a good ethnographer and this is one of our most trustworthy and sophisticated narrative sources for the history and the customs of the places he visited during this time period. It’s a compassionate description that seems to be informed by the people he was writing about — it’s clear he spent time with them and interacted with them”.

Groover also points out this is one of the extremely rare copies of Benjamin’s travelogue that is available to the public.

As an interesting sidenote, Groover says he was able to acquire the book through “analoq” technology.  Although rare books are offered for sale online, he says this particular dealer mails out a print catalogue first. By reading that, he was able to beat out all other interested parties who usually rely on the digital online catalogue.