Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Destruction of the city by the Banu Hilal
1057·Kairouan
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the oldest talmudic academy in North Africa disappeared, its masters dispersed to Egypt and Spain
The invasion of the Banu Hilal ruined Kairouan, the capital of Ifriqiya, whose population scattered. Since the ninth century, the city had been home to the oldest talmudic academy in North Africa, a correspondent of the Babylonian geonim and a nursery of physicians and grammarians.
Its masters made their way to Egypt, Sicily, and Spain, taking their libraries and their traditions with them; the letters of the Cairo Genizah trace their movements from one year to the next. Kairouan never again became a Jewish city, and its school was extinguished with the exile of those who had made it.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Egypt and Maghreb
- Country :
- Tunisie
Ibn Khaldoun, Kitab al-Ibar ; documents de la Geniza du Caire ; Lettre de Sherira Gaon et sa postérité.