In the year 1168 an exceptionally observant Jewish traveller from Spain–probably a gem-merchant–visited the great Byzantine capital city of Constantinople. We know virtually nothing about Benjamin of Tudela save that he wrote a Book of Travels about his extensive journeys around the northern Mediterranean and the Middle East in the years 1159-72. It is the most sensible, objective and reliable of all travel books written during the Middle Ages, was published as early as 1556, thereafter translated into almost all European languages, and became a primary source-book for scholars of the period.1
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