Modern scholars that translate the 1489 stele mention how a physician named Ancheng received a sizable amount of money from "Prince Ding of Zhou prefecture" to rebuild the community's destroyed synagogue in 1421 [REF].
Benjamin of Tudela (twelfth century) found an independent Jewish warrior tribe living in the highlands of Khorasan near Nisapur, numbering many thousand families, regarding themselves as descendants of Dan, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali, under a Jewish prince of the name of Joseph Amarkala ha-Levi [REF].