Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Almoravid collapse
1140-1146·Al-Andalus
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
communities of Seville, Lucena and Córdoba ransomed and dispersed during civil wars
The collapse of the Almoravid empire opened a decade of civil wars in al-Andalus, in which local chieftains, Berber tribes, and the Almohad vanguards fought over the cities. The Jewish communities of Seville, Lucena, and Córdoba bore the cost: ransomed by some, plundered by others, they scattered.
Lucena had long been an almost entirely Jewish city, home to the academy where Isaac Alfassi and then Joseph ibn Migash taught, and from which the generation of Juda Halévi and Maïmonide emerged. Its disappearance as a center of learning is one of the defining events in the intellectual history of Spanish Judaism.
These years mark the transition between the Andalusia of the taifas, where a Jew could serve as vizier, and the Almohad Andalusia, where he could no longer be a Jew at all. Many passed northward to the Christian kingdoms or eastward to the Orient.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Military repression
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Espagne
Abraham ibn Dawd, Livre de la tradition ; chroniques andalouses.