Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Forced conversion imposed by the Almoravides; the community obtains a reprieve in exchange for a heavy contribution
1107·Lucena
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Lucena was an almost entirely Jewish city of al-Andalus, nicknamed "the city of the Jews," seat of a Talmudic academy distinguished by Isaac Alfasi and then by Joseph ibn Migash. The arrival of the Almoravids, coming from the Maghreb, changes the regime of the protected: the jurists of the new dynasty maintain that the city, founded under Muslim rule, must choose between Islam and departure.
The community obtains a reprieve in exchange for the payment of a heavy contribution, negotiated with the governor. The episode foreshadows the rupture that would come a generation later with the Almohads, which would drive the masters of Lucena and their students from the peninsula.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Forced conversion
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Espagne
Ibn Abdun, traité de hisba ; Eliyahu Ashtor, *The Jews of Moslem Spain* ; Yitzhak Baer, *A History of the Jews in Christian Spain*.