Travel Account

This untitled Hebrew account reports descriptions of holy places, tombs, and other interesting tidbits, including the distances between various locales. Although called a travel account, this work does not follow a route that an individual could have taken. The account also records encounters with non-Jews near the tombs of biblical characters and the wondrous structures that dotted the Jewish landscape across the Middle East. This kind of text would have been popular among European Jews interested in learning about communities and places that they could never visit. Jacob also describes the famous lighthouse of Alexandria, which was constructed in the third century CE and became a ruin in the late medieval period.