Sambation

Sambation, legendary “Sabbath River” beyond which the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were exiled in 721 bc by Shalmaneser V, king of Assyria. Legends describe it as a roaring torrent (often not of water but of stones), the turbulence of which ceases only on the Sabbath, when Jews are not allowed to travel.

So firm was belief in the existence of the river that the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus located it in Syria and Pliny asserted it was in Judaea, while the Spanish-Jewish scholar Naḥmanides identified it with the River Habor (Al-Khābūr River) of the Bible (2 Kings 17:6). Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph also saw fit to mention it, as did the 17th-century Jewish scholar Manasseh ben Israel, who carefully studied Eldad ha-Dani’s 9th-century account of his reputed discovery of the “sons of Moses” beyond the river.

Stories about the Ten Lost Tribes and reports of an independent Jewish kingdom in the East have stirred the imaginations of both Jews and Christians throughout the ages. From the European Middle Ages to the 19th century, the river was sought in India, Africa, China, Japan, and Spain. To discover it was to learn the fate or whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes.

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Water and its Varying Forms

Legends of the river produced a vast Jewish literature that eventually entered into Arabic and Christian writings. Among eastern European Jews, an unruly child was sometimes referred to as a “Sambation.”