I am not aware that the term India is applied to Abyssinia
by any Oriental (Arabic or Persian) writer, and one feels curious to know
where our Traveller got the appellation. We find nearly the same
application of the term in Benjamin of Tudela:
"Eight days from thence is Middle India, which is Aden, and in Scripture
Eden in Thelasar. This country is very mountainous, and contains many
independent Jews who are not subject to the power of the Gentiles, but
possess cities and fortresses on the summits of the mountains, from whence
they descend into the country of Maatum, with which they are at war.
Maatum, called also Nubia, is a Christian kingdom and the inhabitants are
called Nubians," etc. (p. 117). Here the Rabbi seems to transfer Aden to
the west of the Red Sea (as Polo also seems to do in this chapter); for
the Jews warring against Nubian Christians must be sought in the Falasha
strongholds among the mountains of Abyssinia. His Middle India is
therefore the same as Polo's or nearly so. In Jordanus, as already
mentioned, we have India Tertia, which combines some characters of
Abyssinia and Zanjibar, but is distinguished from the Ethiopia of Prester
John, which adjoins it.
But for the occurrence of the name in R. Benjamin I should have supposed
the use of it to have been of European origin and current at most among
Oriental Christians and Frank merchants.
