Inteligencia Emocional

An extensive Samaritan Diaspora in time as well as space is attested by inscrip-tions; archaeological evidence; legislation in various places; references in Greek, Arabic, and Syriac writings; and, of course, domiciliary details in the scholia of manuscripts. Samaritan envoys, merchants, civil servants, soldiers, and settlers were likely to be found wherever there was a Jewish Diaspora in the Mediterranean basin. However, northward, in Spain, France, and toward the Danube frontier, there is no evidence of any Samaritan community or legislation aimed at them.

Th ere are ample testimonies as to the date of the fi nal contraction of Samaritan settlement but it is uncertain when the Diaspora began. Alexander the Great is said to have taken Samaritan conscripts to Egypt and settled them as district guards on land allotments in the Th ebaid. Th e Samaritan book of Joshua, supported by the Kitab al-Tarikh of Abu’l Fath, relates that Samaritans were living on the Tyr-ian littoral at the time of Alexander’s invasion and gives the impression that there were Samaritans in Egypt, in some sort of organized community, at the time of his death.

In 331 BCE, Samaritans fl ed to escape the king’s wrath after they burned alive Andromachus, the prefect of Syria. Th e papyri from Wadi Daliyeh relate to the af-termath of this aff air. Apart from those who died at Daliyeh, one may assume that some escaped to the east across the Jordan, though there is nothing to connect them at this time with the Samaritan settlements at Siyagha and Nebo.

Ptolemy Lagus carried numerous Samaritans as captives to Egypt where they were settled, and others followed of their own accord as economic and other con-ditions in Egypt were favorable to them. Th ere was a military settlement in the Fayyum called Samaraeia from Ptolemaic times.

When the Hasmonean renaissance in Palestine was at its height, the Samari-tans were at their nadir. Th e destruction of Shechem at the time of Hyrcanus’ cam-paign against Samaria is recorded archaeologically, and, it seems, the Samaritans of that city were forced to move elsewhere. Some may have left the country.

By the second century, there was a substantial Diaspora throughout the Mediter-ranean islands. A permanent trading colony of Samaritans with its own synagogue, on the isle of Delos, shows that there were Samaritans in Th asos, in a community that had a life of at least fi ve centuries; likewise there was a community at Rhodes.

Inscriptions from Athens indicate that the Samaritans were not restricted only to the islands. One of these inscriptions indicated that a Samaritan woman married a man from Antioch. Perhaps the latter was also a Samaritan. An inscription from Pi-raeus indicates a community there in the third century CE. At Th essalonica, the community was suffi ciently large to have maintained a synagogue, one portion of which was named “the Tower of the Samaritans.”

Samaritan sources bespeak a widespread emigration in reaction to Judean he-gemony undertaken, apparently, in groups. Abu’l Fath gives details of sailing away

in ships to the “ends of the earth,” that is, to points west in the Mediterranean basin, certainly to Sicily where there was a community and synagogue in Syracuse, by land to Babylon or to the northern frontiers of the empire inside the Fertile Crescent, and some to the eastern regions beyond the Jordan, presumably to the Hellenized cities of the Decapolis. Th e account is clearly exaggerated but indicates the capac-ity of the Samaritan communcapac-ity to react on a communcapac-ity basis in a manner no lon-ger possible after the Romano-Byzantine period.

In the second century CE, the Samaritans appear to have been located in every major coastal city in Palestine, and they were to be found in Italy and throughout Asia Minor. Roman destruction of the Phoenician and Greek maritime empires had left a vacuum that had been partially fi lled by Judean shipping. Th e new port of Caesarea, in which the Samaritans were a sizable group, was a base for extensive seafaring activities. By the beginning of the Byzantine era the Samaritans made up about one third of the population of Caesarea. Doubtless, they were among those involved in the shipping ventures.

Frequent references to the Egypt Diaspora in the early Christian world show that the Samaritans were administrators, merchants, laborers, and soldier-settlers.

Th e disputed letter of Hadrian Augustus to Servianus, reported in Scriptorae Histo-riae Augustae, speaks of both Samaritans and Jews in Egypt: “some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, others are at least weavers of linen or seem to belong to one craft or another.” Attention is drawn to the Samaritans of Carthage in 632 CE, and it may be assumed that Samaritans were settled on the North African coast.

Justin Martyr’s First Apology (chapter 26) indicates that there was a Samaritan community at Rome with connections to the rest of the Diaspora. Th ere is a dubi-ous tradition that a statue was erected to Simon Magus by his Samaritan compatri-ots in Rome, which might indicate that the Samaritan community had grown to include a number of wealthy individuals, perhaps even some merchants. Samari-tans in imperial service could have been free to visit Rome and settle there, before the operation of the anti-Samaritan legislation.

Th e fourth century CE saw confl icts between the Church and the Jews and Sa-maritans at Ravenna and Rome. By the fi fth century CE, the SaSa-maritans were scat-tered throughout Italy. Th ey had a synagogue in Rome at least into the sixth century and were well established in Sicily as merchants, farmers, and slave owners at Syra-cuse, Catania, Cagliari, Naples, and Palermo. Evidence of a long period of settle-ment is seen in two inscribed columns that appear to have been part of a Samaritan synagogue in Syracuse.

Th ere are complementary Samaritan and Byzantine references to an infl uen-tial Samaritan community at Constantinople. Justinian’s edict of 527 CE issued in Constantinople speaks of the Samaritans in the “glorious city.” John of Ephesus, gives the impression of a substantial and troublesome Samaritan community in 579.

Th e Samaritans made common cause with the Persians in their campaigns against the emperors of Byzantium, and they took refuge from Byzantium in Persia.

In 530 CE, 50,000 refugees are alleged to have been taken by Cabades from Persia to work in his silver mines in Armenia, apparently the beginning of an Armenian and

Persian Diaspora. Th ere is also some evidence that there was a Samaritan commu-nity in Babylon, though the number of Samaritans may have been so small that they were forced into religious symbiosis with the Jews.

Famine, plague, and the devastating earthquakes of 549–550 CE must have seen many Samaritans anxious to leave their homeland, and it is, perhaps, at this time that the Samaritan Diaspora in Arabia expanded, perhaps to include the is-land known as Samiri in the Red Sea, which is said to have remained the home of a Samaritan group until the 13th century.

Th e Samaritan Diaspora was lost to sight soon after the Moslem conquest apart from Damascus and Egypt. By the 10th century CE, there were concentrations of population in Alexandria and Cairo where the community had its own rais who was responsible for all the Samaritan synagogues in Egypt. By the 15th century, only 50 Samaritan families seem to have been left in Cairo.

When the community in Egypt came to its close is unknown. Th e last known Egyptian manuscript seems to have been written in Cairo in 1761. Th e Egyptian Di-aspora must have come to an end at about the same time the community in Gaza was so reduced that the last members returned to Shechem.

Damascus seems to have assumed more the role of a second Samaritan home-land than a diaspora. Refugees and exiles from Shechem increased the community during the heyday of the community, the 12th through the 14th centuries. Th eir number diminished rapidly by the end of the 17th century when an adjacent Sa-maritan community in Aleppo ended.

Selected Bibliography

Avi-Yonah, M. 1972. “Th e Samaritans in the Roman and Byzantine Periods.” In Eretz Shomron, Th irtieth Archaeological Convention, 1972, edited by Joseph Aviram, 34–37. Jerusalem:

I srael Exploration Society.

Bruneau, Ph. 1982. “Les Israélites de Délos et la Juiverie Délienne.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 106: 466–504.

Crown, A. D. 1989. “Th e Samaritan Diaspora.” In Th e Samaritans, 195–217. Tübingen, Ger-many: J.C.B. Mohr.

Finkel, J. 1933. “Jewish, Christian and Samaritan Infl uences on Arabia.” In McDonald Presenta-tion Volume, 147–156. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kraabel, A. T. 1984. “New Evidence of the Samaritan Diaspora has been Found on Delos.” Bibli-cal Archaeologist 47 (1): 44–47.

Lifshitz, B., and J. Schiby. 1968. “Une Synagogue Samaritaine à Th essalonique.” Revue Biblique 75 (3): 368–378.

Robert, Jean et Louis. 1969. “Bulletin épigraphique no. 369, une synagogue Samaritaine à Th essalonique.” Revue des Etudes Grecques 82: 477–478.