Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Massacre during the conquest of the city by the Fatimids
925·Oria
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 community killed or taken into captivity, including the family of Shephatiah ben Amittaï
Oria, in Apulia, was home to one of the learned communities of Byzantine southern Italy, distinguished by the family of the Amittaï, where liturgical poems were composed and medicine was practiced. The capture of the city by Fatimid troops put an end to this flourishing: its inhabitants were killed or taken captive to Ifriqiya.
The Chronicle of Ahimaats, written in Capoue two centuries later by a descendant of the family, preserves the memory of the episode and of the ransoming of the captives. Shephatiah ben Amittaï, poet and leader of the community, stands at the center of this family narrative, one of the rare internal sources available on Byzantine Judaism in Italy.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Italie
Ahimaats ben Paltiel, *Meguilat Ahimaats* ; Cecil Roth, *The History of the Jews of Italy*.