David Reubeni
| David Reubeni | |
|---|---|
| Born | ca. 1490 Khaybar (claimed) |
| Died | ca. 1541 Spain or Portugal |
| Nationality | Unknown |
| Occupation | religious prophet |
David Reubeni (1490–1535/1541?) was a Jewish political activist, described by the Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia as "half-mystic, half-adventurer." Although some scholars are reluctant to believe his claims to nobility, citing suspicions of fraud behind such claims (in spite of Reubeni's unrelenting efforts to make an alliance between Christians and Jews against Muslims by the intermediation of the young king, John (João) of Portugal), in November of 1525 he was nevertheless given an audience with the king, accompanied with a letter of recommendation from Pope Clement VII, and had always insisted that he was the son of a deceased monarch (King Suleiman of Ḥabor), and that he was the Minister of that kingdom's War Department, now governed by his elder brother, King Joseph of Ḥabor. According to Reubeni's own story this kingdom had 300,000 "Israelite" subjects. The king of Portugal, impressed by the idea, had initially agreed to supply Reubeni with Portuguese arms, but after five months, Reubeni fell into ill-repute with the king of Portugal, who perhaps distrusted his motives, and was asked by the king to leave his kingdom.
The mysteries of Reubeni's origins are manifold, and have not been solved to this day. While Gedaliah ibn Yahya speaks of him as being "a man of dark complexion, like a Negro, and of low stature," his place of origin remains a mystery. Ibn Yahya elaborates, furthermore, that when David Reubeni visited Portugal, he stood in need of interpreters who escorted him in his journey, since he was only familiar with the Hebrew and Arabic languages.
Reubeni stated that he was born around 1490 in a place referred to variously as Ḥabor or Khaybar, which was subsequently identified with a place of a similar name in central Arabia. He related that he had been sent by his brother, King Joseph, who ruled the kingdom with seventy elders, who was seeking alliances against the Turks conquering the area for its great wealth.
Another version is that his true origin was at a port called Cranganore, along the Malabar Coast of India, where a large and well-organized Jewish community had lived for many centuries.
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