A drunken Rabbi, named Judah Azalia, called on me the other day; he has been travelling for three years in the southern districts of Morocco, and he visited also many of the towns and villages bordering on the Great Desert beyond Dra, which province you will find marked in the map. Judah was half intoxicated, as usual, when he visited me, and he left Tangier before I could entrap him in a sober moment. Judah had travelled much in the East, had read a number of curious old books, and was full of traditions he had picked up in the interior of this country; but all he told me was in such a jumbled state that I could not retain it, but requested the learned and drunken Rabbi to commit to paper the subject-matter of our conversation.
I send you a translation of the Hebrew original.
From the preface you will expect much; but, alas! there is only the phantom of a skeleton, whose doubtful apparition leaves us big with fancies and uncertainty. The man knows nothing of geography or history, except the Bible.
You will be struck with the tradition of the Jews of the interior respecting the tribe of Naphtali, the tombs, &c. I regret he has curtailed greatly his verbal statements; for, amongst other curious matter, he told me of a burial-ground of the Jews in the interior—some mile or mile and a half in circumference.
The story about the Israelite warriors is curious, but the staining of the hair before battle looks more like the Goths.
Judah supposes that Wadan is much nearer the Red Sea than it really is; but if the Naphtali tribes fled from captivity, through Central Africa, towards Dra and the South of Morocco, one of the first towns or villages at which they would have found means of subsistence, would have been Wadden or Yaden.
The names of the places and towns are so different from those given in our maps, as indeed they always appear to be when mentioned by natives of the interior, that I can hardly recognise them, and have no time just now to refer to my maps of Africa.
Judah has promised to send me a further memorandum, but the fumes of ‘agua ardiente’ will, I fear, stifle all recollection of his promise.
Translation from the Hebrew.
I am about to give a description respecting my brethren of Israel, who, through captivity, are now dwelling in Western Barbary, and to tell—as far as my knowledge permits—of their state, their mode of living and genealogy; being in conformity with what has been related to me by wise old men and persons of integrity and good faith, incapable of stating an untruth. I will further relate what I have personally witnessed during the travels of my youth, as also the information I have obtained from ancient and exact tradition, both in manuscript and in print.