David Reubeni and Africa’s Lost Tribe of Israel

In 1524 a Black man named David Reubeni arrived in Venice with a bold plan to save the Jews. No one doubted that the Jews needed saving. Over the preceding centuries, they had been driven from much of Europe by expulsions, massacres and forced conversions. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella had banned Judaism in Spain and, in Reubeni’s own time, their grandson, Charles V, who commanded an empire that spanned Europe and the New World, seemed eager to spread his grandparents’ anti-Jewish policies. The needs of the thousands of refugees, most penniless and some held as captive slaves, posed an immense challenge to the Jewish world, which had scant resources for dealing with a crisis of that magnitude.

Jews were not the only refugees. Millions of Muslims and Christians were displaced by war and revolution, but Jews had no friendly political power to facilitate their resettlement. Instead, they had to rely on the largesse of whatever local Jewish community they wandered to, and these were quickly overburdened and fearful lest this flood of refugees prejudice their already vulnerable status in Christian society. Eventually, Charles V would adopt a more benign Jewish policy and most Iberian refugees would find homes in Ottoman lands but, in Reubeni’s time, few would have predicted such positive outcomes.

Enter David Reubeni, described as a Hebrew-speaking Black man covered in battle scars, with his radical solution. He claimed to be the general of a heretofore unknown Jewish kingdom in the heart of Arabia, populated by some 300,000 Jews, all descendants of the Israelite tribes who had been lost to their brethren since 722 bc. His king, he said, was advised by a Sanhedrin (a council of elders) and protected by an army of fierce Jewish warriors. How different from the experiences of the Jewish communities of the 16th century. But it was also untrue. There was not even a Jewish community in central Arabia, let alone a kingdom. To Jews, Reubeni promised that his army would deliver them by force to the Holy Land and restore their security and pride. To Christians, posing as a sworn enemy of Islam, he offered an alliance in exchange for weapons. His message gained him audiences with Europe’s rulers – the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of Portugal and France – even though some of them had banned the practice of Judaism in their territories.

Did Reubeni really hope to restore the Jews to the Holy Land through Christian conquest? There is evidence that he had something different in mind. Although to Christian audiences he claimed to be a sworn enemy of Islam, in his diary, which we still have today, he generally described Muslims favourably and even seems to have thought that some would support his plans to establish a Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem. Many Jews hoped for a victory of the more tolerant Ottomans over the persecutory Christian regimes. One prominent rabbi, Isaac Abravanel, even speculated that a victorious Ottoman sultan might ‘accept the Israelite religion, bring about Israelite salvation, and be an anointed one (messiah)’. Perhaps Reubeni was hoping for such an outcome. With the weapons he hoped to acquire, and Christians and Muslims already primed for conflict, he might be able to spark an apocalyptic war, in which the Ottomans, with their military superiority, might be victorious. No doubt this would have been gratifying for his followers, many of whom had suffered severe persecution in Christendom.

Why was Reubeni believed? How was it that a Black man received such a warm welcome from both European Jews and Christian rulers? The 16th century was a time of heightened political tension between the Muslim and Christian worlds, as rival empires competed for land and control of trade routes. The era was also one of intense apocalyptic expectation and many thought that these tensions foreshadowed a final and decisive battle between the two religions. European fear of Ottoman power led many to dream of discovering foreign allies in newly discovered lands. Christopher Columbus pitched his voyage as a quest to contact the ‘Grand Khan’ – an Indian monarch rumoured to prefer Christians to Muslims. Also circulating were rumours of Prester John, a mighty Christian king who lived somewhere adjacent to the Muslim world and promised to come to the aid of his European co-religionists and perhaps even lead a conquest of Mecca. Shortly before Reubeni’s arrival, the Portuguese believed that they had finally found him. Prester John, they claimed, was none other than Dawit II, the Christian king of Abyssinia, whom they had just succeeded in contacting. Hopes for their salvation became fixed on Africa.

Like Christians, Jews were no strangers to hopes of salvation at the hands of hitherto unknown brethren. How else would the Messiah be victorious? If his coming were to be preceded by war, how could Jews, who received no military training and were usually banned from possessing weapons, be useful soldiers without help? It was here that the myths of the lost tribes of ancient Israel came into play. Hidden from the world in a far-off land, these Jews were their own masters and maintained a warrior culture. Where these tribes were located was a matter of much debate but, inspired by the Portuguese discovery of a Christian kingdom in Abyssinia, Jewish speculation began to focus on Africa. A new wave of legends spread about African-Jewish warrior heroes. Thus, when Reubeni appeared, many Jews were primed to welcome a Black saviour.

For nearly a decade, Reubeni’s quest for Jewish solidarity united many Jews across the Mediterranean. His career, however, came to an end when Charles V, suspicious of his claims, turned him over to the Inquisition and he was burned at the stake in 1538. Reubeni’s was the first Jewish messianic movement with global reach, his influence stretching across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. His improbable story reminds us of a time when European Jews, drawing on the apocalyptic expectations of their Christian neighbours, reeling from the trauma of inquisitions and expulsions, and filled with the wonder fuelled by global exploration, looked with desperation to a Jew who was not like them and who offered them a vision of solidarity and hope for a different way to live.

Alan Verskin is Samuel J. Zacks Chair of Jewish History at the University of Toronto and the author of Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah (Stanford University Press, 2023).