The Jewish presence in Granada

The Jewish presence in Granada Erika Spivakovsky

In contrast to almost all other Spanish cities and townships, nothing tangible survives in Granada that might be reminiscent of Judaism.1 There is no trace oj‘an ancient synagogue on either side of the River Darro, neither on the hills nor on the plain. On the right bank, region of the oldest settlement, rises ahe hill of widest dimension, the ‘Albaictn’.2 On the 1eJ bank ascends the steeper hill ending in several ,cummits: a pointed one atop the ‘Mauror’ slope is crowned by the ’ Torres Bermeja.s’ (Red Towers) ; the other, the majestic plateau ‘Sabika’, carries the Alhambra. To the west of the hills, the city on the plain spreads outwards into the valley, the ‘Vega’. No buildings in asly of these areas reveal a Jewish past; Granada’s urban nomenclature oflers not the slightest hint of a former Jewish presence, and all curreNt - and former - studies of Granada lack satisfactory information about the location of the historic Judaic quarter. There is no mention even of the last chic? temple that must haJe existed until 1~?92, the year of the great exodus (decreed by Isabella and Ferdinand in r’his very city) of all the ,7cws_from Spain. Andyet, Granada, the town that has forgotten all about its Jews, is said to have once bt,en known as ‘GarnEta-al- rahEd’ : Granada,

Journal of Medieval History 2 (3) :215-238.0

L{V of the Jews, and later tradition has accepted thiJ. as a fact. I attempt in this study to show that, although some Jews lived there from Roman times, all of Granada never was a ‘city of JewL Second, taking as point of departure a remark in the new Encyclopedia Judaica (1971:8/Z?) that the Jewish quarter was (‘not located in a single place throughout the centuries of Mtc. lim rule”. I shali show that the earlier Jewish qz(arters (preceding the Muslim conquest and lasting throughout the
TWO fairly recent hi::torical studies ofGranada by Gonzalo Macso ( 1963) and Bosque Maurel (1962:5:, 75) pl ace a special emphasis on the tradition according to which Granada was said to be a Jewish city. In later works, Ladero Quesada ( I969a : 17)) .4shtor ( 1973 : 313), and AriC (1973 :329) also fully accept this as a fact; Baer, in a side glance in the new edition If his study of the Jews in Christian Spain (1971:23), states that “Arab geographers of the tenth and twelfth centuries already call Granada and Tarragona ‘Jewish (1973 : 163)) in the cities’ ” and Al-‘Abbadi short sketch devoted to Jews in Granada in his recent study ofthe Muslim kingdom, refers briefly to the same tradition. Checking the sources given by the abovenamed writers - and those of preceding

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gene:ations - one finds that the concept of ‘Gar aata-aWahud’ can be traced through the ; ges to a single remark in Ahmad ArRazi s tr*avcloguc. 3 A casual utterance of a traa-4cr in the first half of the tenth century -words that may bc true, Msc or simply cxaggcratcd -- thus forms the basis of a concept that was to bc infinitely pcrpctuatcd. How trae+rs‘ reports can play hil\‘OC- with historical \.cracity is dcmonstratcd by the famous crroncous qtatcmcnt of Dr Hicronymus Miinzcr (Garcia Xltxrcadal 1952 :358), :‘ German tourist who in 1494 tYtinIi\tcCt tht rccrntly mnishcd Jewish community oi Granada which hc nc\*cr saw at 20,000 sds, a hnti~Slic’ number acct*ptcd fix tht following 500 years or so, until Ladcro Qucsada cstablishcd ( iWWi35) that the Granndan Jewish community on the cw of itr: final dcpnrturc counted no more than 550 persons.

Granada, M&-mot

transmitted to us hy IAI~S d(xi car~.jA iI\ what looks like a direc\t

quotation from a tcx:. otherwise lost.4 ;Ir-Razi called Granada a ‘castle’, using a nani:.,

Gxela,

which does uot appear anywhcrc

else except in MArmol’s amplification of Ar-Razi’s wordc ; that is, the Arab \vas referring to the walled and fortified cnclosurc formin ; the nucleus of the township as he saw it in chc tenth L*cntury. In the ~~>scncc of any fiirtller geogri~phical details ~il‘c~~d, thr ‘cast!c’ might be idc;itificd as the region ofthc :Ilhaicin hill \v~~wc‘ \ hc ancient

market town of tfle Remans had stooLi ,jncl on top of whose walls, or what \ViIS left Of thcnl, in al)oLt 7.55 ;I. l)., the Arab chief of neighboring Hegira, al-Xciban+, had restored the fortifications (Yebra 1966 : 1 i, 17). Ar-Razi was not only endlessly copied, but he was also misllnclcrstood ;vhcn hi qualified the CaStlc of Grrmada 1,): saying tllilt “in mcimt times it we ;t ‘township of tltc Jews Ix~misc ,jws popttbccl it”. ‘Ancicttt c‘mi rcf?r only to Rorn;tn times wlwn, tlmnks to tlw I+ prcwnc~ of ,Jc ws in ~ottncil of Illilwris, that arc:\ can saft$ 1~ 2sswmctl. But not all t11c foliotvcw of*;It*-Ritzi knew lww to intcrprct IlE 111 c*orrrc*t Iy, as wr will c(he. i“irst of a11, it sl~c~iltl 1~ noted that almost noiic of‘ the sub to sccl uen t ;Iral~ tr:l\*clcrs of tllr. era preCous the fear lOO(~ Al)., writing on Granada? rnc~ntions ;Ir-Ri!zi or the presence’ of,Jews in t ll;lt e;\rlicr Gr;m;:;!;t, H:~rdly onca oft hem calls (;r;lllil(l;l Iclrisi

‘tObmhi1~ (or

I’tlrisi,

(Jf

iil1Otlt

the’

,]c\vs’

:

nrithcr

ill-

1 lOO- 72j wllC) Other-

pair1 ilttCtltiOr1 to jews, dcSc1 ibing them, iis l~rcclominaiit in one part of’ lbr t’smlpl~, 1-$uqos, xtd wliu CiIllS ‘l’arra,goria a!+ WC11 Xi i,ttctbn;t ‘01’ tllc’ ,JLYVS’, nor :Ibulficla 3rouncl

wiw

This, and no more, is \,vhat A--Razi

said ahout

1273, nor l,lm K;ttttit;t

a1IotIt ,325,

nor iIl->(l-

Figure 1. ‘I’he Wa/qforma of Granada, drawn by Ambrosia de Vko in 1580. 1. Plaza dc 1,~ ?tlcrwdc~; 2. church of San JosC; 3. Al lambra; 4. 7’orrcs Rerrnt*jas. &kuror; 5. church of San Llatias: 6. church 01~Sar~Luis. ‘Cam dc 10s Eros’ Muscm~, Granada. Reproduccd from Bosquc Maurel 1962.

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al,%Basit in 1466 (6arcia Mercadal 1952). As far as I can establish, only Al-Himyari in the thirteenth century calls Granada ‘Granada of the Jews’, “because the first inhabitants to settle there were Jews”. But this author had read Ar-Razi (Al-Himyari 1963: 13 and 20) ! Al-Himyari’s apparently independenL knowledge of ‘town of the Jews’ therefore is nothing but a copy from Ar-Razi. It simp’iy will n4)t do to ci::: Al-Himyari as a ‘proof’ of Ar-Razi’s remark, yet this is what some later proponents of ‘Clarnata-al-Yahud’ have done (Gonzalt, Maeso 1963 : 18, 19 ; Al‘Abhadi 1973:163). Of the first three Spanish Christian authors writing in the last decades of the sixteenth c’entury on the history of Granada - Weban $6 Garibay, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and Luis de1 MBrmol Carvajal - only Garibay and Mhrrnol refer to Ar-Razi. Garibay says: Concerning the foundation OS’the city of Granada.. .I will fo!low I’aseo [?] and Rasis, the writer, that within the jurisdict ion and area of the ancient city of Eliberi.. . there was a -castle named Granada that was called ‘city of the Jews’ because they had founded it.. . .

Leaving z.side the mysterious Vaseo, Garibay then amy.lifies the remarks of Ar-Razi: .--which, according to the reasons given by Rasis, is likely to have had its beginning in one of two period.,: either about the year ‘80. during the Empire of Fiavius Vcspasian.. .or around the year 140 under the Spanish emperor Hadrian.. . . (Csrriazo 197 1: 149)

Garibay obviously understood that Ar-Razi’s ‘ancient’ does not refer to the Arab ;zuthor’s own time or to the relatively shor: era of Arab rule preceding it, but only to the Roman era - unlike, for example, A&or, who surmists (1973 :313) that Ar-Razi was referring to the ‘Spanish caliphs’. nrQrmo1, who had Garibay ‘s published text before him, as well as Mendoza’s manuscript (he did not acknowledge thie latter, although he lifted portions from Mendoza’s work), must bear responsibility for most of the 218

false information about the Jews of Granada. First of all he interpreted Ar-Razi’s remark as though it referred to A4rab times - an error subsequent historians were to repeat until our day. Unaware that Ar-Razi refers to the Jewish population as, in the first half of the tenth century, a thing of the past, M%:mol equates Ar-Razi’s ancient ‘township of the of the tenth centur) *Jews’ with the Granada that Ar-Razi had seen. Second, by ascribing to Ar-Razi‘s ‘castle’ a locatipn of which the Arab write; ha& said nothing, M&rmol committed the ‘)asic error of defining the region of Mauror - instead of the Albaicin - as the ancient, prr:-thirteenth century, quarter of Granadan ,Jews. There is a consensus today that somehow the Jews had been settled on the M:iuror since time immemorial. But no literary or architectural proofsustains this hypothesis. The belief, long since traditional, is based exclusively on M&rmol’s citation of those few words of ArRazi and on Mgrmol’s undocumented explanatio? of the supposed villa de 10sjudfos. And that error was reinforced by a remark of the German doctor Miinzer, according to whose testimony the juderia in the fifteenth century was in fact located on the Mauror. This is true enough for the epoch of the Nasrid kings as ~11 be seen - but not, contrary to gcner;ll belief, for the 1200 years preceding the Nasrid dynasty. M&rm\ol, in trying to imagine the aspect of Ar-Razi’s ‘township of the Jews’, fashioned his idea of it from the landmarks of Christian Granada of the sixteenth century. Vaguely rrtcollecting that the last Jewish quarter in the fifteenth ten tury had been located on Mauror, around the church of San Matlas, Mcirmol makes his ‘,‘icwish city’ reach all the way “from the parish of the cathedral to thrlt of San W \ t ias, where there are foundations of very old 3. ldings; and the fortress must have been wh,>! 3w are the Torres Bermejas”?

Mendoza

went his own, untraditional

way:

I will say something about the founding of Granada, which people populated it in the beginning, how they intermingled, how it got this name, with whom it became a kingdom. I grant that this will not correspond to the opinion of many others? but it will be what I found in Arabic books of’ this region and those from Muley Macen, king of Tunis, and also what until today remains in people’s memory, furnishing authors with the truth. (Mendoza 19?0:96,97)

In the following short paragraph, Mendoza, in his succinct fashion, condenses the history ofGranada up to its first king a:ld gives several facts not reported else&ere.7 After describing the town of Granada as aplacc taken some years following the Arabic c,onquest by the troops who had come with their captain Tarif from Damascus,, Mendoza (1970:97) says: Where they first settled was Libira, the ancient Illiberis. called by us Elvira, located on the mounnrin opposite to where the city is now.... G,anada was one of the Iberian villages, a.id in it remained the people left there by Tarif Abentiet [Tariq ibn Ziyad] after hr had taken it, following a long siege; but few in number, poor. apd compcseti of various nations, leftovers from a place destroyed. ,

Figure 2, Engraving showing Don Diego Hurtado de hlendoza ( 1504-75), author of the Cum-a de Gramdo. Reproduced from Rewe hispanique 23( I9 11) :3 1O-3.

His unprecedented, purely imaginary, idtntification of the supposed ,Jewish city with nearly all of Granada (excepf, ironically, the Albaicln) - and, throughout all the various eras of the numerous Arab regimes - caused the misunderstanding which still persists today. Regrettably, historians followed Marmol instead of Diego de Mendoxa whose history of the Guerra cle G’ratrada thy otherwise acclaim as superior. Always a reliable guide through any maze of politics, wars and history,

In these few v ords, Mendoza pictures the state of the populztion of Granada during the three hundred years of nearly perpetual viol ence from the eighth to the eleventh century (Ar-Razi’s visit, though in the middle of the tenth century, had coincided with an interval of calm during the calip late), preceding the establishment of the Zirid kingdom. “They had no king”, continues Mendoza, “until Aben Habuz [Habbus ibn MaksanJ, who united the inhabitants of the one [Elviraj and the other place [the ‘pueblo’ Granada-J, Founding a city at the Tower of San Josef, called ‘of theJews’, in the Alcazaba”. Here we have, in my opinion, a clue to the diihculty surrounding ‘Garnata-al-Yahud’. Mendoza, studying all the available Arabic sources,

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Figure. 3 Granada, &‘La torre de San JO& gue llamaban de 10s Judios”: the bclltowSv of the church of San Jlos& dating rrom the: eighth century, isI~ its present state. Photograph by Sr ,Jos6 Choin Castro.

evi&ntly did not find a Jewish town ; one to’-%CI=only had formerly been named ‘of the Jccvs’. That tower, still partly preserved in the present belltower of San Jose, shows exactly where an ancient Jewish quarter once existed, namely in the heart of the Albaicin, on the very site of San Jose and around it, The ancient parts of that church tower date from the eighth to the tenth centuries (Gomez i%loreno 1892 :455-g). It is the former minaret of the mosque ‘Masyid qasabat Garnata’, constructed on this spot by the Muslim conquerors (Seco de Lucena 1966:51). This

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name alone should prove, incidentally, that the original “Garrlata’ was not located on the Mauror, but, all tradition to the contrary, on the Albaictn. Somewhat later, the mosque was called by th 3 Almoravids who took Granada in the yea!* 1090 ‘Mczquita morabitin’ (de 10s mortihito.,~), the Almoravid mosque (Gomez MorerIp 1892:455). Since the connection of thi: .“vver with Jews dates back. to the early eighth century, it is clear that a Jewish settlement had been located on the ri$t bank of the Darro. This makes sense, because all over Spain Jews used to build their

quarter as close to the protective citadel as possible (Amador de 10s Rios 1960:2 17). Their ancestors might have inhabited the same quarter, alongside a walled Roman township - whose foundations below the Alcazaba had riot yet been discoverecl in Mendoza’s time when the wall a’ lrnd the Albaicin was still intact. he old Roman defense structures would have been maintained while Visigothic military governors tried to keep order in the province; the last of these was Count Teodomir who surrendered theentiresouth,from Mdlaga to Murcia, to the Muslim invaders in 713 (Suarcz Fernandez 1970: 11). According to Mendoza, however, Granada did not fall as early as that, but several years later and only after a This delay, overlooked in all the hi probably due to the fact that the majority of the people in Visigothic Granada had been Christians - not Jews. Had the Jews been in preponderance, they, as elsewhere in Spain, would have done their best to help the Muslim conquerors enter the town as their ‘liberators’. The undefined number of Jews in this community on the Albaicm must have consisted cf small farmers, artisans, and sma,l traders, hardly different from t hei; non-Jew ish neighbors: an indigenous population ofa provinciai region subsisting on its local resources. So, when Ar-Razi reported o:r this former he merely enlarged ‘Garnata-al-Yahud’, somewhat, as travelers do, on what people told him about an earlierJewish quarter that had been limited to the immediate ncighborhood of this ‘tower of the Jews’ and had long since disappeared when the Muslims chose that site for their mosque.

We have no proof that there was still a Jewish qrarter in Granada in the tenth century, the *in;e of Ar-Razi. Nor do we hear of the name_ of ;kny *Jewish individual in Granada before the eleventh century when, under the Zirid government, Jews suddenly gained prominence there through their leader, the famous Samuel ibn Nagrela (993-1056) who had been born in Cordoba. But Gorzalo Maeso says that a large Jewish community, the basis of a great Jewish culture, remained in Granada following the Muslim conquest and throughout the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries (Gonzalo 1963 :44), and Ashtor adheres to the same traditional view, never doubting that Granada was ‘the Jewish city’ all through this period (1973:315,316). Basing himselfon Abraham ibn Daud (Cohen 1967), Gonzalo mentions as proof for his view the rabbinical correspondence, the responsa, between the geonim (Hebrew spiritual leaders) of the academies of Sora and Pumbeditha in Babylonia (Iraq) with their opposite numbers in, as he says, Granada, But ibn Daud (or ibn David) does no? specifically mention any Jews in Granada during these three centuries. The correspondence in question involves Jewish rcl’bbinical leaders from such places in A?Andalus as Lucena and Cordoba and Gonzalo seems tc be mistaken in assuming that they hailed from Granada. Much of the nisunderstanding stems from the Babylonian corresponder ts :onfusing Lucena with Granada; for exampie, in some of the responsa we find Lucena at times referred to as ‘Lucena, near Grac.ada’, as though it were a suburb of Granada. This might explain the belief of rabbinical some writers in an important school in Granada at a time when there was nothing like that. The fact is that much of the correspondence originated (apart from Cordoba) from Lucena which is near Cordoba

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but by no means is FOnear to Granada as to be mistaken for Grsr.nada. Granada was then the wretched village of which Mendoza speaks ; it consisted merely of “leftovers, a place destroyed”. From the easy conquest of Granada in 1013 by the Zirid chieftain of the Berbers, Zawi ben Ziri, Leopold0 Torres BalbAs infers that the Albaitin was deserted and its ancient construction in ruins (1941:427-46), a consequence of nearly three centuries of neglect and anarchy. Throughout that time, the region of Granada was the scene of unending wars, revolts, banditry. Previous to the first caliph, the Umayyad Abd-ar-Rahman III (the great unifier af ,21-Andalus who pacified it in the tenth century), chaos reigned in and around the inaccessible mountain : trongholds and valleys of Granada. The region still held a huge Christian population, referred to by later These, as well as writers as ‘Mozarabs’. maladies (former Christians), and various tribes of Arabs and Berbers, were for many generations locked in death struggles. Although Gonzalo Xaeso (1963 :44) calls Granada during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries ‘the city p7f the Jews’, and a place of lift where, as in Lr cena, ‘“the normality facilitated the foundbng ofschools, real nursery gardens of Jewish culttire”, such positive conditions cannot be proven for Granada’s Jews before the era of the Zirids in the eleventh century. It is doubtful if during those unsettled times a Jewish community was able to exist, let alone flourish in rabbinical culture. Perh&sps a few Jewish farmers managed to stay on in their ancestral homes, but the rest probabl!r transferred to the safety of the walled town of Lucer.a, which was in fact an allJewish city to which Granadan Jews fled agak in later centuries, a well as to C6rdoba itself. The Jact is that Ar-Razi makes no

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Figure 4. Granada, Puerta Monaita, the remaining part of the ancient double gate leading to the :iIra:aha on the Albaicin, rising above the rooftops c~fthe houses now blocking the former access to that fortress. ‘l’his view was taken by%Jost! Choin Castro from the tower of his own house, which faces the ruins and was built on a section of the wall linking Puerta Monaita on the heights with Puerta Elvira on the plain.

mention of Granadan Jews in his own time, and neither do the gcncral histories where they toileli on that region during that era. All this changed with the conquest of Gralkack by the Ziricls when, as Mendoza says, the city was actually founded. Then the ground was prepared for a talcntcd Jew like Nagrflla ito attract many of his people to Granack Samuel ha-Levi ibn Nagrcla (SW Graet z 1898 and Bacr 197 1 for rcfercnccs) had to flee his native C&doba, that recently so splcndicl center of civilization, because the Cordsbans themselves, together with in-

Figure 5. Granada, Puerta Elvira. Through the arch part of the Puerta Monaita is visible, showing the vicinity of both gates. Photo by SrJost! Choin Castro.

vading &North African Barbers, destroyed that city in 1013. With thv fall of the Umayyad calipha tc, Al-Andalus crumbled into some thirty small city-states, the taz/iu, minute but indcpcndcnt Muslim kingdoms. In each 01‘ the hi/as, a military chieftain founded a new dynasty and maintained a luxurious court. Qnc of the ta$as was Granada. Following the easy conquest by Zawi, his nephew Habbul; ibn Maksan united the inhabitants of Uvira (hitherto the capital city of the province, dcstroyccl in the civil wars) with those of Granada. Tl~us, Habbus founded what only now - according to Mendoza -- Imanx a city, at the former ‘tower of tlic,Jcws‘ on the (later m llrd) A1Saicin, where he constructed a fortress, ‘qasaba Garnata’, the AlcazAa. This diminutive new city-state proved a refuge for

.Jews

surviving the sacking of C&dc!‘,a’s aljam, although Samuel ihn Nag&a himself emigrated first to MAaga whcrc his work ;js a calligrapher in Arabic brought him the at;cntion and protection of’ King Habbus’s ivizir. Thus Samuel, from le,jding a refugee e:;istcnce as a small shopkeeper and scribe, ; bccame the vizir’s successor. Hc served Ha&us, and the following king Badis ibn Habbus,‘as a statesman and military captain. All the w:!lilc, he continued l-i? writing of Hebrew pc:try and Bible analysis, and he acted as a Macccnas to a generation of poets, scholars and artists. His circle fc)r a time included Solcmon ibn Gabirol, onr* of the great Scphardi poets. It should be kc pt in mind that this era so favorable to Jews occurred some eighty to a hundred years after the visit of Ar-Razi, who

had spoken only of Granadan Jews of the past. Now, with the spread of Samuel ibn Nagrela’s fame, a new community of Jews was in fact flourishing in Granada. But where was this new juderia located? Their a&amawas not likely to have occupied the old site by the (later) San Jose, which was the former ‘tower of the Jews’. In place of this tower, as we have seen, a mosque then called “of fortress Garnata’ had been erected, if not by the earlier Muslim conquerors, probably by one of the Zirid kings who rebuilt the citadel. The Jews must have chosen for their aljama a place adjoining the castle bulwarks. There is a relatively large square in the vicinity of the Puerta Bab-al-Unaydal- now called ‘Monaita’ - the (still standing) huge gate of the wall of King Habbus’s Alcazaba, that strong rampart based on Roman foundations. Now called (Plaza de las Mercedes’, it is a nondescript site; at one time it was the locale of a cattle market, at another, of a military barracks (Gomez Moreno 1892 :La35) . In Zirid times, it might have been the market place of a Jewish quarter. The Jewish aljama or juderia of the earlier middle ages in Spain must not be understood as a ghetto in the pejorative sense. Ne;ghborhoodl:, were vohntarily settled by people of the s2me origin or religion. The typical al jama a quarter in the Arab style of a self-contained neighborhood, was a maze of very narrow ssreets, mostly dead-end, leading to windowless houses built around patios; for greater safety, such all’eys were close ,: _-%at night by a single tloor to the outside (Torres Balbas n.d. :209--15). The location close to the Puerta Rfonaita on the height - and also near the Puerta Elvira below - was convenient both for access to the court as well ;as to the town on the plain. There was a Jewish cemetc ry outside the Puerta Elvira, where Samuel ibn Nagrela

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was buried (Graetz 189832803, and ihis may be regarded as confirmation that this was the area of the Jewish aljama in the eleventh century. I venture to suggest this locality because no one else has as yet investigated - to my knowledge - where on the Albaicfn, an area so large and .Iraried, the Jews were in fact living by 1491-2. Their presence on that hill is acknowledged in the 1491 Peace treaty between the Catholic Sovereigns and Bcabdil, where the Albaicin is referred to as residence of Jews: “Jews.. .of Granada, the A!baicfn and its suburbs.. .” (Coleccion de docu memos 433, no. 38). Another possibility is that the ‘Wie
Jews in Castile (Dozy 188 1:282-94). Joseph was accused, probably slanderously, of murdering one of Badis’s sons; of plotting to deliver Granada into the hands of the taifa king of Almerfa; and of blaspheming against the Koran, to nameonly the more outstandmg denunciations (Dozy 1881:282-94; Graetz 1898:ch. 9). On 31 December 1066 the unlucky vizir was crucified by the Granadans and, so it is reported, three or four thousand other Jews were destroyed together with him (L&i-Provensal 1941 :l-63; Dozy 1932:73; Graetz 1898:285; Handler 1974:60-75; Hoenerbach 1970:421-2; Imamuddin 1961: 140; Baer 1971:36). In view of the usual hyperbole in numerical estimates, with which history abounds, one wonders if the real dimensions of this pogrom can be ascertained. If the Jewish community was as totally destroyed as the last Zirid king Abe Allah claimed, how then could Jewish intcLlectua1 life have been continuing in Granada? The famous poet, critic and scholar Moses rbn Ezra, who was born in Granada about iO55, and his numerous family survived, remaining in Granada to the last decade of the century. Moses had a circle of scholars and poets around him in which joined in his youth the ,qreat Yehudah Ha-Levi from Tudela. Most 2robably, then, the Jewish quarter ofGranada reconstituted itselfquickly after the storm had passed. But if the massacre numerically exceeded that of the person of Joseph and his immediate circle of wealthy individuals - if, in fact, thousands of Granada’s Jews were victimized, a full-size pogrom organized by Muslims still seems out of cha.racter. A contributory factor might be considered which no one has mentioned in this connection : many Granadans, probably the majority, were still Christians (Mozarabs), their number augmented by the descendants

ofthe former inhabitants of Elvira, Christians as well. This was the eleventh century, ushered in by the millennium, foreshadowing the First Crusade when the attitude towards worsened all over Western Christendom. Knowledge of this new era of anti-Semitism spread from France and Germany, brought to the Christians living under Muslim rule by wandering clerics (Blumenkranz 1960 :3823). Is it not likely then, that Granadan Christians also turned from an earlier indifference toward Jews to an ugly mood, suddently to explode into that pogrom? It was a sign of those times that the independent tafas, and especially that of Zirid Granada, were too weak io deal with the growing unrest of their own Mozarab population, while the Christian north was steadily gaining strength. This dangerous situation would soon move the Almoravids, a sect of religious warriors from North Africa who veiled their faces, to sweep over Al- Andalus, uniting it once more into a kingdom. When Toledo fell in 1086 to Alfonso VI of ( idstile the Spanish Muslims called to their assistance Yusuf ben Tashufin, chief of the Almoravids. He defeated Alfonso in the famous ‘battle at Zallaqa (Sagrajas) near Badajoz the same year, and when alterwards the ta$iz kinglets, plagued by rivalries, still could not manage to present a united front to the Christians, only Tashufin, strong man of the hour, was able to pull Muslim Spain together. Setting out in 1090 to subdue all of Al-Andalus, his first target was Granada, by then famed in the Muslim world for its beauty and .natural riches as la joroba de1 Andalus: the camel’s hump of Andalusia (the hump was considered the tastiest part of camel meat; fhki Miranda 1963:161). Granada was in turmoil under Abd Allah, a grandson of King Badis. His weak position

Jews

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is usually ascribed to the enmity of the fakirs, but he surely also lacked the support of the large Mozarab population, the most unrul:r of the Gtmanadans, as subsequent events were to prove. Tashufin simply marched his army to rhe gates of Granada, where the last Zirid king came out submissively to receive him, handing his little kingdom over. The Almoravid deported Abd Allah and other taifiz kinglets as well, bringing all of Al-Andalus under his rule. The Muslim populace of Granada, released from the high tributes the Zirids had exacted from everyone to maintain their luxurious style, acclaimed the great military leader, although from then on Granada lost its status as ;;zcapital, being ruled from Marrakesh under a series of governors. Very likely, the Jewish community remained in its aLjamaduring that apparently peaceful change of regime. Historians’ accounts of their fate arc in conflict, but each contains some truth. Baer (1971:60) says the Jewish community was destroyed by Tashufin, but perhaps this was nothing more than the usual sacking of the Jewry by a victorious army entering defenseless Granada, because Graetz (1898, ch. 10) praises the Almoravids for providing security and peace and treating the Jews tolerably. Torres Balbas states that the Almoravids persecuted the Jews, though later on the Almohads were to be worse; and that some were converted to Islam and others emigrated (1954: 172-97)) while according to Imamuddin ( 1961: 159)) under the Almoravids “the Christian and Jews enjoyed religious freedom but were not allowed to build new churches and synagogues”. What is most likely is that the Almoravids made a pact with the leaders of both nonMuslim groups, the Mozarabs and theJews, which were usually treated in analogous ways. From later developments we learn that the

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Mozarabs had a pact with the new regime which granted them protection - in return, no doubt, for substantial tributes. Presumably, the Jewish community of Granada entered into a similar agreement with their new overlords. A Jewish aljama did indeed continue, always close to the Alcazaba on the Albaicin where the seat of government - of Al-Andalus now as a North African province - remained. A rabbi, Abu Selemoh David ibn Muhajar, was active in Granada in the first half of the twelfth century (Amador 1960: 165-6). The Almoravids were religious zealots, motivated by their fight against the dccadencc and secularization of the former Islamic dynasties in Spain, but once having seized power they seem to have accepted their non-Muslim subjects, both Jews and Christians, remaining content with some token of a sham Islamization on their part. The Mozarabs, however, betrayed their pact (Huici Miranda 1951:108-15). In 1125 Alfonso I of Aragon, the Batallah, who a few years earlier had conquered Zaragoza, approached Granada with en overwhelming army. Mozarab leaders had secretly appealed to that champion of the rtxonqw’sfa to rescue them, promising they would help him gain entry into Granada. But they failed to bring off a ‘fifth column’ revolt inside Granada, and Alfonso had to retreat from the well defended city, but the garrison, under the command of the Almoravid governor Tamim ben Yusuf, was unable to overpower the thousands of Christians who then escaped. At least 10,000 Mozarabs together with their complete households joined the army of the Batallador. Those unable to get out were exiled by the Almoravids to North Africa, but Jews continued living in a Granada that must have become rather depopulated for a time. A few decades later, the Almoravids’ power

was challenged by another North African sect on the march, the Almohads, ‘Unitarians’, whose program of religious intransigence envisaged the final destruction of all synagogues and churches still extant in AlAndalus. The Jews of Granada joined their Almoravid rulers in their fight against the newer and greater danger which the imminent invasion of the Almohads posed to them. The Almohads’ conquest of Al-Andalus led to some seventy years of their unified rule. In about 1156 Granada had been yielded peacefully by the last Almoravid governor to Abu Said, son of the victorious Almohad emir Abd-al-Mu’min. Ibn ‘Idari says that Abu Said was honorably received in Granada by ~OSZ&Z&X(the veiled ones), and extended the most perfect welcome, and that on his entry the uelados left Granada, safely returning with their households, property and sons intact across the Strait of Gibraltar, while according to Imamuddin (1961:164), Abu Said conqucrzd Granada and exterminated the Almoravicl. garrison. Like all their predecessors, the Almohads setthd down in the stronghold of the Alcazaba OR the Albaicin, but more fanatic than the Almoravids, they at once irqposed their own doctrine by force on the people of Granada, including the Jews who apIarentJy were still loyal to their own faith, and those of the C17ristians or Mozarabs who after all also had rem dined there. Jews and Christiaris now made common cause, working to free themselves from their new oppressors. The Jews were instrumental in facilitating the entry into Granada of the troops of the leader of the antiAlmohad forces, Ibn Mardanish, ernir of Murcia and Valencia. In 1162, his soldiers, whom Arab writers describe as chiefly Christians, led by his father-in-law Ibn Hamusk, occupied the small ‘Red Casvle’ on

the Sabika Hill. Until then, that hilltop across the Darro seems to have been left unfortified, except for the small fortress, a primitive qaki-Hamra’ (Red Castle), an outpost presumably erected in the ninth century (Bermudez Pareja 1972). The view toward the Sierra Nevada still lrcked, of course, the familiar profile of the Alhambra which was started only in the thirteenth century and did not develop into its present aspect until the fourteenth and fifteentjr centuries. In the Alcazaba, the Almohads held out under siege, their strong walls resisting Ibn Hamusk’s battering rams. Their defeat seemed near when Ibn Mardanish arraved in person at the head of another large ar:my. He established himself on the right bar& of the Darro outside the Alcazaba, occupying the area where the church of San Cristobal now stands, still remembered as the ‘hill of Ben Mardanis’. The two wings of the invaders’ armies faced each other in full view across the Darro, which from the heights is not noticeable in its deep ravine. At this critical juncture, when the Almohads in their fortress saw themselves surrounded by two large armies, a contingent of Almohad troops, led by two other sons of Emir al-Mu’min, was approaching Granada to relieve the besieged garrison. Arriving in the dark on 13 July 1162, their vanguard fell in a surprise assault upon the troops of Ibn Hamusk who were camping outside the cramped quarters of the Red Castle in the open on the large Sabika plateau. Put to flight on the unfamiliar Granadan terrain, these 2000 men tried to reach the camp of their King Ibn Mardanish, seemingly so near on the opposite hill. In a drama unique in Granada history, the soldiers, horsemen, knights and infantry, rushing straight ahead in the night, tumbled down the chasms into the abyss of the Darro where the flower of

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the anti-Almohads perished and the Almohads gained a total victory. Ibn ‘Idari said ::Huici Miranda 1963 :350-5) “Allah blinded i hem, making them think that the road to Ibn i.Mardanis’s camp was even”, but thleir en(;&es had been instrumental also, destroying * he bridge over the Darro (Dozy 1881:364ff. ; ,ioenerbach 1970 :464). Following their .criumph, the Almohads killed all Jews and Chtistians regarded as traitors and expelled :he rest of them from Granada for good (Dozy 1881:58). At this time the movement of Jews from Al-Andalus to the Christian north of Spain which had set in early in the eleventh century with the fall of Cbrdoba was at its height, while in Muslim Spain not a single synagogue or church was left standing. But still, remarkably, one finds in Granada former nonMuslims, both Christians and Jews. Despite all the persecutions, a number of them had not left Almohad Granada but a)ttended the mosque ‘of the Converted’, ‘Gima Ataibfn’, the present church of San Juan de 10s Reyes. Only the overtly professing Jews had totally ceased to exist under the Almohad rule which gave Muslim Spain, including Granada, seventy years of precarious peace. They were still recognizable as former ,Jews, however, because they were forced to wen.r clothes cut differently from those of
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vanquished. During a sort of interregnum in the absence of a centralized power, chaotic conditions once more prevailed ir . Al-Andalus for some twenty years. In the end, Ibn-al Ahmar of the Banu Nasr gair-ed the upper hand among the warring chieftains as he conquered Arjona and, eventually, Granada (1238). Al-Ahmar, as Muhammad I of the Nasr dynasty, incorporated what remained of Al-Andalus - Almerfa, the Alpujarras, Mglaga, Ronda, Gibraltar - into a new (more or less) unified kingdom of Granada that was to last for more than 250 years. Some Jews were still there as this last era of medieval Granada opened. A small community of long-time Granadan residents must have been hanging on in the old aljama on the Albaicin. They and their ancestors had endured through the entire Almohad period, for Jews were present then, rising to the occasion in 1228 when their oppressors were attacked by Ibn Hud, the first of the new conquerors of Granada. Together with other Granadans, they kept the Almohads uuder siege in the Alcazaba Garnata, delivering them to Ibn Hud. Ten years later, after Ibn Hud’s assassination, Granada would surrender to AlAhmar (Torres Delgado 1974:62-l 18; Ari& 1973 :49-59). While those Jewish fighting men were living as fake Muslims under the Almohad regime, their alj,ma on the Albaicin must have long ago lost its overtly Jewish character. Perhaps we can now appreciate why no Jewish artifacts from any period previous to the Nasrids are preserved in Granada. What had survived destruction or camouflage under the Visigoths, and during pogroms and battles involving Mozarabs, muladtes and Berbers, must finally have been erased by the thorough-going Almohads or, under mortal danger, ‘by the Jews themselves. But why are there no Jewish memories or mementoes

from the following period, the era of the Nasrid kingdom [ 1238-1492), when there were no pogroms in Granada and it is generally believed that the Jewish community was so prosperous?

Nasrid Granada, the wonder ctty of the Alhambra built by Muhammad I and his successors, remains in some of its finest parts almost unchanged to this day. It is closer to us in time then mo:t of the Jewish buildings preserved in Toledo, Seville, and Cordoba. The Nasrids, forever praiseworthy for their supreme achievements in art, architecture, poetry and beauty in all its aspects, were no fanatics. Their politics were unstable: the twenty-one monarchs of their dynasty faced constant danger from attacks by Christian Spain and from internecine Muslim rivalry ; many of them were either assassinated or forced into abdication. But there is no evidence of their having engaged in a policy of religious persecution. New immigrants must have started arriving, people from many parts of Spain and North Africa, and the Genoese merchants who gradually were becoming masters of Granada’s export business. Among the ;?ewcomers were Jews. Indicative of the Nasrids’ original friendly, or at least tolerant, .i*eception ofJews is the fact that a new Jewish community settled on the Mauror. The only evidence for the existence of this juderia is contained in Dr Mtinzer’s few words (cited below) but, with some amplification by Marmol these words suffice to confirm the identification of this site. The first Jewish immigrants would have

moved into or near the ancient quarter on the Albaicin. King Muhammad I himself, at the start of his reign and possibly for much longer, resided in the ‘palace of King Badis’ at the Alcazaba Garnata. He began at once to lay the groundwork for the construction of the Alcazaba of the Alhambra and for the first time had water from the Darro conducted up to that area (Huici Miranda 1953 : 125) s ‘I:ut he had to defer transferring his court there until his splendid new palace was in readiness. Only then would the overflow from the old aZjamaof the Jews have begun to follow. The new alj,ma was established at the foot of the Mauror, guarded from above by the Torres Bermejas, and from then on the Alcazaba Garnata on the Albaicin was called ‘Alcazaba Cadima’ : the ‘Old Fortress’. For at least 200 years thereafter, if not 250, the two aZjamas continued to exist in a heavily populated metropolis at the time of the most elaborate Hispano-Islamic civilization, even if of decreasing power. But how, in truth, fared the Granadan Jews? Why, from the splendor ofGranada, has there not issued some Jewish testimony in literature, in history, and in the city itself? Does not this lack of Jewish testimony suggest that, after all, the climate towards Jews was not as propitious under the Nasrids as has been believed? The new EncyclopediaJudaica ( 197 1: 852)) not attempting to examine this phenomenon, simply says: “There is no available information on the Jews of Granada during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.” Mujtar Al-‘,\bbadi (1973 : 164) says the same : “The political and social situation of the Jews in Granada under the Nasrid dynasty is very little known.” Rachel Arie also notices the paucity of information on the history .DfJews under the Nasrids between the thirteerth and fifteenth centuries (1973:33!1). From the 479

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pages of AriC’s impeccably researched history of Nasrid Granada, her report on the Jews, presenting the nearly total knowledge extant on the subject fills, no more than eight pages (1973:32&-37). Yet Gonzalo Maeso - who at the time of writing of his study, accepted as accurate Dr Miinzer’s picture of an enormously numerous Granadan lation by the end of the fifteenth century believes that in the Nasrid kingdom the IIebrew culture of past centuries was kept fully alive, that Jews had a strong influence upon the Nasrid court, acting as “royal physicians, counselors, managers, interpreters, soothsayers etc.” (1963 ~47). But while canvassing :L period of over 250 years, Gonzalo Maeso produces no more than two names of Jewish notables in that city: Abraham ben Zarzal, physician to Muhammad V; and the last rabbi of the community at the date of expulsion (1492): Saadya ben Maimon ben Danon, a talmudist and poet.9 AriC adds a few names: a doctor, some interpreters and businessmen, but this does not alter the picture of insignificance, depressing when compared with the era producing a Samuel ibn Nagrela or a Moses ibn Eara. This poor harvest of outstanding Jewish personalities, while hardly in accord with Dr Miinzer’s supposed multitudes, corresponds to the real facts, insofar as these can be inferred. And the principal fact is that there never can have been many Jews in Nasrid Granada. It seems that at some time before Muhammad I’s death in 1273 the popular mood turned against the Jews. They were then ordered to wear a yellow hat; some decades later, a defaming badge to be displayed on their outer garments was imposed as well (Gayangos 1840:116; AL‘Abbadi 1973: 164). Perhaps the zeeitgeist of the thirteenth

century had something to do with it. Though

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Granada was then the last and only outpost of Islam in Christian Europe (until the Turks came in, starting sometime before their conquest of Constantinople in 1453), it apparently could not avoid being infected by the increasingly virulent anti-Judaism in Christendom. In any case, a Jewish community even in a very large city did not necessarily number thousands of people. The famous ghetto of Venice in the year 1516 had, according to Marino Sanuto, no more than 900 inhabitants. And something like that number - perhaps at first a few more, but (for reasons we will discuss) fewer later on - went to live on the Mauror which until the Nasrid era had been a lowly quarter: it had taken its name from the water carriers living there (MQrmol 1946 : 133). We have seen, with the help of the ‘Jewish tower’ of San Jose, that the site of the new alj,ma of the Jews established on the Mauror under the Nasrids was not the one of which Ar-Razi spoke 300 years earlier. Nor is it likely that Jews settled on the Mauror in the eleventh century because, during the Zirid era, the royal court was located on the op.‘ posite side of the town. The still prevalent concept of a juderfa on the Darro’s left bank earl-

ier than the thirteenth century is due only to Marmol’s misunderstanding, and all existing diagrams, maps or plans of this Jewish quarter are more or less figments of the imagination. If we compare a number of Granadan city maps, from those used by the brothers Oliver Hurtado in 1875 to Rachel Arid’s of 1973, we find that as regards the Jewry they all seem to have copied each other. The sketch published by the Oliver Hurtados (1875 :615) reaches almost up to the Torres Bermejas and down to the Campillo. Bosque Maurel, on his sketch of a plan of ‘Granada musulmana’ ( 1962 : 75 j , calls the entire left bank of the Darro, from the

foot of the Alhambra down to Bib-ar-Rambla, ‘Garnata Alyehud’ and ‘Juderfa’. Gonzalo Maeso ( 1963, illustration facing p. 98) traces a large section of Vito’s Plataforma, reaching from the Torres Bermejas to the Genil, including the ‘Campillo’, as the outline of the Jewish quarter, but at least he calls it the ‘probable’ outline. While Ashtor’s sketch (1973:311) g ives the juderia somewhat more modest proportions, the site itself - on the Darro’s left bank below the Alhambra - is an anachronism in regard to the period covered in his Volume One. The general area does however correspond on the whole to the one the Jewry might have occupied in Nasrid times, though it seems unlikely that their quarter comprised so many blocks of houses, nor is the site of the synagogue defined correctly. Rachel AriC’s plan (1973 : Fig. 3) illustrating ‘Grenade nasride’, still allots too much ground to ‘Garnatat Al-Yahud’ and ‘Juderla’ ; she fails here to draw the conclusion of Ladero Quesada’s numerical revision of the Jewish community. If the Jewry of Granada comprised some 110 households as Ladero Quesada documents (and AriC duly notes), their houses in that tightly built-up city, even if they were one-family dwellings in the Moorish style, would cover only a small part of the ground traditionally (by grace of Marmol) conceded to them by almost all writers, In spite of the numerical confusion Dr Mtinzer has caused, he still deserves credit for giving a valuable hint as to the general location of the last Jewish community - though he was not able to point out the site of the synagogue. The following is all Mtinzer says about the Jews: [the King Don Ferdinand] ordered.. .to demolish the Jewry where lived more than twenty thousand Jews, constructing at his expense in the place they had oc-

cupied a large hospital and a magnificent church in honor of the Virgin, destined to an episcopal seat, a temple that we succeeded seeing finished up to the cupolas with the roof already ir, place. (Garcia Mercadal 1952:358).

The Spanish translator of Miinzer’s Latin text follows with this footnote: This church, constructed in the place where today stands the Military Headquarters which Miinzer saw nearly finished, turned out soon to be too small for the population, and in view of this, the Catholic Sovereigns ordered built the one we know today [the Cathedral] in the same place where stood the mezquita mayor that is described in the text, while the other temple was made into the monastery of San Francisco. Besides, the narrative is of interest in precisely and clearly pointing out the location of the Jewry of Granada in the time of the Moors, because from Mtinzer’s words it can be inferred that it was located in the midst of the central zone of the Antequeruela district, comprised between the Puerta Real and the Torres Bermejas.

The translator’s interpretation is only partly correct. Doctor Miinzer’s report, while indicating, through the mention ofthe (later built) Military Headquarters (capitarilageneral), the location of the Jewry as on the Dar&s left bank, fails to give an approximate idea of the extent of that community. Antequeruela is too far away from the landmark Miinzer pointed out; it was always regarded as outside the supposed Jewry (Seco de Lucena 1958 : 451-5), and Mtinzer did not mention Antequeruela in connection with the juderia, nor the Puerta Real or the Torres Bermejas. The only location overlapping in the texts of both Dr Mtinzer and Marmol is that on which Miinzer saw a new church being built in place of the former Jewry : it was the spot where the Military Headquarters now are, and this happens to be in the vicinity of the church of San Matfas. This is important, for with Marmol we are now coming full circle. Despite all his errors, Marmol provides a grain of truth when he mentions San Matlas as a landmark of the Jewry. From what we now know of only a few hundred people residing there

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Figure 6. Granada, church of San Matias. Close-up of part of its ancient wall with remains of a walled-up window of Gima Abrahkn, unfortunately recently whitewashed and rather crudely renovated. Photo by Sr Jose Choin Castro.

[and some of the Jews included in the total number of emigrants were living on the Xbaicin and in the suburbs), we should be able to estimate the probable size of the Jewry. It was no larger than the usual Spanish call. Comprising the limited area next to San Matias and the capita&a genera!, the aljama of the Jews in Nasrid Granada covered approxidnately one twelfth of the area suggested as ‘Frobable’ on Gonzalo Maesos illustration, 01’even less.

The church of San Mati*is -. not the present edifice dating from the later sixteenth century, but its immedi:tte predecessor - was erected in the year 150 1, on the si.te, like all churches in Granada, of a former mosque That mos-

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que, called (according to a document of the church in the archive of San Matias) ‘Gima Abrahen’, had been demolished nearly to its foundations. But this contradicts the fact that, within the first ten years of their rule of the city, the Christians did not destroy any mosques. For the first seven years they did not even touch them: they had promised in the Peace Treaty not to disturb the Moors in their worship. Even when they broke the promise, enforcing mass conversion on the Moors ( 1499)) they still did not demolish mosques ; instead they converted them to Christian churches. IMost of the flimsy old structures had to come down later on in the sixteenth century anyway, although a few minarets were retained, transformed into belltowers which still exist, like that of San Jose. But ‘Gima Abrahen’, ostensibly described as ‘mosque in its archival document, was demolished, probably when the entire jade& was pulled down

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rather humble building, such as would corresgond to the limited means of a small and impoverished community. The Jewish community had a rabbi up to the last moment. Why has no one ever wondered where the synagogue was irk which Saadya ben Maimon served? Is it not probable that this ‘Gima’ (from Arabicpami ‘chief house of prayer’, the root also of ‘aljama’) was the synagogue of theJews on the Mauror in Nasrid times? Why, then, was the building not called a synagogue? Perhaps our quest into the history of Jewish life under the Spanish Muslims provides an answer. Throughout the Muslim era, Jews had the greatest difficulty in holding on to their identity. In this period, they dressed exactly like their Muslim neighbors, so much so that the Nasrid rulers soon forced them to wear yellow hats and later on made them add a defaming badge to their outer garments, as we have seen. Humiliation was the law. What else would be the effect of such a public disdain on people so derided but that they should try to shrink, hide, and if possible, totally assimilate? During the fifteenth century, for their safety within the Moorish environment, they must have made themselves increasingly inconspicuous. Aware of memories from their pain1 history under former Muslim regimes, the Jews of Granada must have learned not to call their houses of prayer synagogues, which is a c;ood reason for their being so utterly forgotten. In suggesting that ‘Girna AbrahCn’ be considered a Jewish prayer house, I am encouraged by Seco de Lucena’s investigation of all the mosques of Granada (1966 :43-5 1). Seco

imer tnat bima nnranen was not included among the Islamic houses of worship. Also, there is nothing analogous to ‘Abrahtin’ in the names of other mosques. None had a name from the Old Testament. ‘Abrahen’ or ‘Abrahem’ was still the most popular name among Jews. Of the Jewish emigrant:; cited by Ladero Quesada, a considerable number were so called. This baaings us to another complication. By the fifteenth century, it is surprising to find some Muslims with the name of ‘Abrahen’ instead of‘Ibrahim’, the earlier, Arabic, form of the name. Were these Muslim ‘Abrahems perhaps former Jews, converted to Islam, yet not allowed to shed their Jewish name? Half a generation after the expulsion of all Jews from Granada, in 1508, the count of Tendilla, first Christian governor of the Alhambra, refers to a certain Abrahen Ezechiel (a name as Jewish, as, say, Yehuda) as moro de allende, a ‘Moor residing abroad’ (Meneses Garcia 1972 :351, 365). In Almohad times, Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher from Cordoba - himself for a time living as a zham Muslim - believed that the lip service the Almohads demanded of Jews did not constitute idolatry. A Jew forced to accept Islam, he said, should still be considered a Jew (Zimmels 1971:367-401). In accordance with such a permissive attitude, many Granadan Jews may have declared themselves Muslims, especially the wealthier ones, as happened with *.he Marranos in Christian Spain. They merged so fully with the Muslim environment that the Christian conquerors did not even detect these secret Jews among the *Moors. It is impossible to estimate the extent of this Islamization. All we know is that those few Iis

ausence

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hundred loyal Jews who chose to emigrate in 1492 belonged, on the whole, to a poorer class of people. 10 This still unexplored subject should be studied by Arabists and Hebraists. It requires another AmCrico Castro to disentangle ‘who was really who’ in Muslim Spain. But in all this confusion and concealment, we seem to have found the main reason for Granada’s total silence about Jews in the Nasrid period. Apparently, even those Jews openly professing their faith had blended into the Islamic background to such an extent that there was in Granada - unlike any other Castilian and Aragonese city or township -- in fact no synagogue, no ‘street of Jews’, although at least 550 people had not deserted their religion. Their neighbors and former neighbors knew where the Jews were living, but when the Christians took IGranada so suddenly (by stealth, through connivance with Boabdil, but that is another story), those living memories were mixed up and in part eradicated by the extirpation of Judaism from Spain that followed immediately after the conquest. Having triumphan.tly ended the reconquista, and subsequently e:vpelled the Jews, the Cp tholic Sovereigns ordered whatever tangible relic would remind (Christendom of them demolished. The number of Jews in Granada had been small, their house (or houses) of worship similar, on the outside, tc a private house or a mosque. It was easy to wipe out all memory of the Jews of Granada and of their temple.

Epilogue In the summer of 1972 I was doing research in the Archive of the Alhambra where much of the material for this article was generously

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put at my disposal by the director of the Archive, Sr D. Jesus Bermudez Pareja, and by the archivist, Dr Ma Angustias Moreno Olmedo. One day I was accompanied on my way to study there by Dr Ruth BorchardBerendsohn, the novelist, biographer and recent author of The unknown Bible. Dr Borchard had just arrived from London; it was her first visit to the city, with which she was totally unfamiliar. She had never read about Granada. She stood for what seemed a long time gazing at a map of eighteenth-century Granada tat graced the wall opposite the desk at which I worked. Then she asked me to open my modern folding map of Granada; she compared it with the map on the wall and carefully directed ‘me to mark the folding map at four points. She w& profoundly convinced that on any of these four locations, at one time or another, there had been an intense concentration of ancient Jewish life. She thought that exca\yations in those places might produce precious biblical manuscripts such as Jews, when forced to flee for their lives, used to bury beneath, or in the vicinity of, their synagogues. I happen not to be interested in tales of psychic phenomena, extra-sensory perception or whatever manifestations of non-rational methods of acquiring knowledge some people pursue. Of ‘radiesthesia’, that is, a kind of map-dowsing (the process Dr Borchard employed) I had never heard until that moment. To please my friend, I identified for her the four locations that her concentration on the map had produced. They were: the church of San Matfas; the church of San Jose; the Plaza de las Mercedes; and the church of San Luis. The reader will judge whether excavations are required to prove the association with past Jewish life of the first three of these landmarks - although valuisble finds might perhaps be made if one could burrow beneath

them. I need say no more about San Matias, San Jose and the Plaza de las Mercedes except that I am astounded by the accuracy of Dr Borchard’s intuition. With San Luis, she has thrown in an unexpected bonus, for, there, the city of Granada is likely to start digging in the near future. That church is today nothing but a shell filled with debris; it was erected on the site of ‘Gima Asafa’; in 1933, its interior was destroyed by fire. The ruin stands in a remote section of the Albaicfn, abandonee today; even the well in front of it is boarded up. But with the current boom in real estate values throughout Spain, it will doubtless bc pulled down sooner or later to make way for reconstruction of the area. If and when excavations occur on that site, it would not do any harm, I think, to watch for possible Jewish antiquities, perhaps some from Roman times.

Notes 1 See the investigation ofover 100 Spanish towns by F. Cantera Burgos (1955). In this article, all quotations from Spanish sources have been translated by the author, who is indebted to her friend Sr Jose Choin Castro for providing the photographs used for making four of the illustrations. 2 As that area is known today. The name originated only during the thirteenth century when it applied to the present ‘Plaza Larga’; later it was extended to comprise all the adjoining areas. For the sake of convenience, I refer throughout to the entire region as ‘Al baicin’. 3 Lt%Provcn~al 1953 :67; there called Al-Razi. Ar-Razi is not to be confused with the Persian physician Rhazes,his contemporary.Lt%Proven~al warns about Ar-Razi’s general inaccuracy and also states ( 1953 :55) that almost all descriptions of the Iberian peninsula by later Arab geographers are based on his text. 4 See also Gayangos 1852 and Catalan and de And& 1975 ; compare Levi-Provent;al’s French translation, 1953 :67. 5 On the Catholic Church Council of Illiberis, the ancient predecessor or near neighbor of Granada, see Thouvenot (1943:201-l 1) and Hefele (1855:122-61). The four canons prohibiting the Christians from

various kinds of association with Jews and pagans, formulated at that Council in rhe years between 300 and 320, show that by thenJews had long been established in that region. 6 MBrmol 1946: 129. There is by now an extentive literature proving Mdrmok’s unreliability. Fol ml&CDelbosc (1894) noted M&rmol’s extensive plagiarism from Mendoza. In 1964 I pointed out another plagiarism from ?” Lviend,Jza and Marmol’s erroneous interpretation of the s &me. In 1958, Seco de Lucena Paredes proved that MBrmol interprets various historic precincts oi the city of Granada incorrectly. In 1966, the same wrrter demolished the misinformation Marmol gave abolre the Ccnete district, and G6mez Moreno Martinez nailed down still another error of Marmol’s inventioil, 7 Mendoza, who during his life had acquired many Arabic books, added 400 rnclre to his collection during his exile in Gransida from 1569. Compare his letter to Jeronimo Zurita. 1 December 1573 (Dormer 1680: 570-I). For the volumes still preserved in El Escorial, see de And& 1964:235-323). 8 Seco also demolishes the ‘Alcazaba gidida’, another of Marmol’s phanta,Ins adopted by later writers. 9 Gonzalo Maeso 1963 :98. Compare one of the re.$onsa by Rabbi Saadya in Netanya hu ( 1966 :54-62). 10 According to Ladero Quesada ( 1969b :335-46)) only one of the emigrants had mure than 10,000 wales of silver; the majority owned on average no more than between 100 to 500.

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