Berber plunder of the city, Jews killed and driven out

The capture of Cordoue by Berber troops brought an end to the city of the caliphs. The civil war that had torn al-Andalus apart since the fall of the Amirides ended with the siege and then the sacking of the capital: the palace city of Madīnat al-Zahrā' had already been destroyed, its libraries scattered.

The Jewish community of Cordoue, the most learned on the peninsula since the century of Ḥasdaï ibn Shaprut, dispersed along with the rest of the city's inhabitants. Among those who took to the road was a young scholar destined for the highest offices, Samuel ibn Naghrela, who made his way to Malaga and then to Grenade, where he would become vizier under the name of Shemuel ha-Naguid.

The center of gravity of Andalusian Judaism thus shifted toward the taifa kingdoms — Grenade, Saragosse, Séville — and Cordoue never recovered its standing.