ELDAD BEN MARL!, also surnamed HAD-DANI, or the Danite, Jewish traveller, was the supposed author of a Jewish travel narrative of the 9th century A.D, The story, which is highly fictitious, describes how Eldad set out to visit the Jews in Africa and Asia, and fell into the hands of cannibals. Saved by his lean ness, he was captured by another tribe, with whom he spent four years before being ransomed by a Jewish merchant. He then de scribes his visits to the dwelling-places of the lost tribes. Issachar he found in the mountains of Media, Zabulon and Reuben near the Paran mountains, Ephraim and half Manasseh near Mecca, and Simeon and the other half of Manasseh in Chorazin. Dan, Napthali, Asher and Gad had founded an independent kingdom in the gold land of Havilla beyond Abyssinia, whither also Levi had come from near Babylon.
The real Eldad, to whom this work is ascribed, was a celebrated Jewish traveller and philologist, fl. c. 830-890. Born in Arabia, Palestine, or Media, he travelled in Mesopotamia, northern Africa, and Spain, spent several years in Tunis, and died at Cordova.
Epstein and D. A. Muller suggest a relationship between the letter of Prester John and the narrative of Eldad, but the affinity is not close. Eldad is quoted as an authority on linguistic points by the leading Jewish philologists of the time.
work ascribed to Eldad is in Hebrew, divided Bibliography.-The work ascribed to Eldad is in Hebrew, divided into six chapters, probably abbreviated from the original text. The first edition appeared at Mantua about 148o ; the second at Con stantinople in 1516; this was reprinted at Venice in 1544 and 1605, and at Jessnitz in 1722. A Latin version by Gilb. Genebrard was published at Paris in 1563, under the title of Eldad Danius ... de Judaeis clausis eorumque in Aethiopia . . . imperio, and was after wards incorporated in the translator's Chronologia Hebraeorum of 1584 ; a German version appeared at Prague in 1695, and another at Jessnitz in 1723. In 1838 E. Carmoly edited and translated a fuller recension which he had found in a ms. from the library of Eliezer Ben Hasan, forwarded to him by David Zabach of Morocco (see Relation d'Eldad le Danite, Paris, 1838) . Both forms are printed by Dr. Jellinek in his Bet-ha-Midrasch, vols. ii. p. 102, etc., and iii. p. 6, etc. (Leipzig,
. See also Bartolocci, Bibliotheca magna Rabbinica, i. 10I-130; Furst, Bibliotheca Judaica, i. 30, etc.; Hirsch Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1895), v. 239-244; Rossi, Dizionario degli Ebrei; Steinschneider, Cat. librorum Hebrae orum in bibliotheca Bodleiana, cols. 923-925 ; Kitto's Biblical Cyclo paedia (3rd ed., sub nomine) ; Abr. Epstein, Eldad ha-Dani (Pres burg, 1891) ; D. H. Muller, "Die Recensionen and Versionen des Eldad-Had-dani," in Denkschriften d. Wiener Akad. (Phil.-Hist. Cl.), vol. xli. (1892) , pp. 1-8o; C. C. Rossini, "Leggende geografiche guid aiche del IX. secolo (il Sefer Eldad)," Reale soc. geografica italiana, Serie 6, vol. ii., pp. 16o-190 (Roma, 1925) .
