Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Forced conversion imposed by Abd al-Mumin; part of the communities fled eastward
1148·Tlemcen, Oran
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Abd al-Mumin, the first Almohad caliph, pushed his conquest eastward through the Maghreb. Tlemcen and Oran fell, and the rule applied in Marrakech was applied there as well: no more protected status, and therefore no more tolerated Jewish community.
Some Jews converted, some made their way to the East — Egypt, Syria, the Land of Israel — or to the Christian kingdoms of Spain. The communities of present-day Algeria did not truly reconstitute themselves until after the Almohad collapse, and above all after the arrival of Spanish refugees at the end of the fourteenth century, who refounded Alger, Tlemcen, and Constantine.
It is from this rupture that most Maghrebi traditions date, tracing a family's origins "from Spain": the earlier fabric had been broken.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Forced conversion
- Region :
- Egypt and Maghreb
- Country :
- Algérie
Chroniques almohades ; Abraham ibn Dawd, Livre de la tradition.